POLICE RAID MARC EMERY

Looking For Grow-Op In Famous Activist's Home

In the early hours of March 5, Victoria police quietly surrounded the
home of famous Canadian marijuana activist Marc Emery and his partner
Coral Clay, then rang his phone until he awoke to answer it. Emery
looked at his clock as he lifted the receiver. 3:30 am.

"This is the Victoria Police," said the cop. "We have your house
surrounded. We have a warrant to enter the premises. Please go out
your front door, do not go back into your house. Out onto the
sidewalk. Is there a child in the house?"

There was a child in the house. Coral's son, Dylan. The tactics
employed by Victoria Police were intentionally intimidating, and the
presence of a child may have been the deciding factor in keeping
police from kicking in the door and firing tear gas grenades. Marc
stumbled out onto the sidewalk in the predawn light in his underwear.
Coral was still pulling on her shirt as she hurried out with Dylan to
stand beside him.

Officers eventually emerged from the darkness with a warrant. Had they
daunted the "Prince of Pot" as they had hoped? Not a bit, says Emery.
He casually invited them in out of the cold.

"Eight cops sheepishly troop in, because I'm not the least bit
disappointed-looking and they know this isn't going to be as juicy as
they fantasized," said a scornful Emery.

The warrant specified that police were looking for plants, pots,
lights, ballasts, capacitor assemblies, fans, blowers, fertilizers,
scales, and documentation associated with the production of marijuana.

"This young cop, Constable Colin Brown, is doing his best
unthreatening 'let me explain why we're here,'" recalled Marc. "When,
within a few seconds and a cursory look at our very middle class home
with no grow op or anything odd, he realizes his fishing expedition
has come up empty."

Marc vividly recalls the officer's explanation for the raid: "On
Wednesday, I was walking by and smelled pot. So we got a warrant to
enter your property to look at your electrical meter, which seemed a
bit higher than normal. I smelled what now appears to be your dryer
exhaust vent, but I thought I detected the smell of pot coming from it
when we executed the earlier warrant Saturday."

Search warrants require probably grounds. The "probable grounds"
offered by Constable Brown were so unbelievably weak that they cast
serious doubt on the already ailing reputation of our justice system,
and on the reputation of Justice D Maihara, who signed the warrant.

"Since none of [Constable Brown's] assertions turn out to be true, it
is obvious that any police officer can get a search warrant by
literally lying and making up whatever information they require to get
in your house," said Emery. "The terrifying thing is that any pot
smoker in Canada could have their homes invaded by big uniformed
secret police Nazis because of second hand pot smoke."

Obviously, police have had an axe to grind with Emery since the
mid-90's when he opened Hemp BC on Vancouver's Hastings Street,
sparking a bong, book and hemp shop revolution across Canada. Since
then, Emery has been successful as the publisher of Cannabis Culture
Magazine, the mastermind and owner of Pot TV, the founder of the BC
Marijuana Party, and the proprietor of Marc Emery's Seeds, a company
famous for marketing high-quality genetics.

Since 9-11, activists, medpot clubs and booksellers throughout the US
have been targeted and busted by federal agents. Canada is now
welcoming US federal intelligence and drug war agencies onto its
sovereign territory, including the DEA and FBI, while allocating
millions of dollars in extra funding to CSIS. With US President Bush
running an ad campaign that blames marijuana smokers for supporting
terrorism because they buy pot, it is likely that intelligence
operations and busts against marijuana activists, users, traffickers
and growers will become more common. The US drug war, brought to you
courtesy of global domination, is now available in Canada, and without
strong public outcry, it is here to stay!