Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. Today, our guest - another Hero of mine, Mr. Marc Emery. A Canadian who dared to sell millions of marijuana seeds to U.S. consumers and who now faces years in a U.S. prison for doing so.
Though nothing will
Drive them away
We can beat them
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
________________
We can be heroes, like our friends. Marc Emery, he’s been a friend to me. He’s been a hero to me for years and I can’t get over the fact that the United States Government called him, “One of the big drug king-pins” and they wanted to arrest him and bring him to trial in America. I don’t think it was for the same reason but, it has a little bit of the echo’s of going after Tommy Chong, for his notoriety. But Tommy’s notoriety was for something else.
Marc’s notoriety has been… for you; for me; for progress; for the truth. He’s been speaking on our behalf for most, if not all, his adult life. Been working to make the truth available. To put people in place, to pay for events; to make it possible to bring that truth forward.
I tell you what. I want to share this with you. This kind of explains the problem, you know, the belief system of America. The inability to really look at what’s before our eyes. Laura, let’s share that.
________________
(musical accompaniment)
A cadre of devious idiots
Set about to control the world.
They plundered their nations treasury
Handed it to forces
Both dark and personal
Fear and hatred is their mantra
Death and disease, their tools.
They continue blasts of obligation
‘Cause at the heart we’re a
God-damn bunch of fools.
We don’t know much, you and I
Trust and obey and then we wonder why
The agents of terror, of blunders and errors
Stand before us with a blank check for us to sign
________________
Alright, you are listening to the Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network. I’m happy that we do have Mr. Marc Emery online and without much delay… Marc, are you with us?
Mr. Marc Emery: I am. How are you?
Dean Becker: I’m well, Marc. Good to have your voice on the airwaves again. It’s so nice to hear your out.
Mr. Marc Emery: Though we don’t know how long I’ll be able to say that, too, you know. I could get extradited to the United States, at a courtroom in Seattle. I’ll be in Sea-Tac pre-trial for four to six, possibly eight weeks, before I’m sent to a federal correctional institution, known as a penitentiary, somewhere in the United States. So, I’d probably only be up and around, speaking like this, for the next two or three days.
Dean Becker: Marc, while we were trying to reach you, I told the folks a bit about… that probably most, if not all, your adult life, you’d been working to share and bring the truth in focus.
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, two things happened to me that were pivotal in my lifestyle. Thirty years ago, I first discovered Ayn Rand in the summer of 1980 and I first started smoking marijuana in December 1980 and those two combined have basically alchemy, that kind of alchemy’s led to about thirty years of non-stop activism on behalf of liberty and for the last twenty years, against marijuana prohibition.
Dean Becker: As I was telling the audience, that there’s not the direct correlation, Tommy Chong was chosen for his celebrity, but for a different sub-text, if you will. In your case, it was your celebrity and the fact that you were working to get that truth pushed to the front. Right?
Mr. Marc Emery: Well you know, I’ve got this great resume of an extraordinary career. You know, we put out seventy-four issues of a truth telling magazine, Cannabis Culture. Three thousand videos from the year 2000 to 2006, on Pot TV. I gave away four million dollars from 1995 to 2005 and they paid for incredible things. You know, one of the great things is, it’s still paying off dividends because only six months ago the congress repealed the bar amendment, which forbade the District of Columbia from having a medical marijuana law.
Well you know, in 1998 I paid five thousand dollars to get petitioners out to get enough signatures to put that on the ballot. So the money I donated, to activities in the United States, are still paying off because I was the principle funder of the Washington D.C. Ballot Initiative in 1998, which congress intercepted with by passing the bar amendment. But that was repealed six months ago so now we have medical marijuana in Washington D.C.
That’s the kind of thing that my money went to and there‘s a good example of something good coming from it. That benefits people now. So, if some member of Congress, or member of the Senate, or member of the president’s staff actually goes to get marijuana, in the district of Columbia and they can do so legally, then they owe that to me. Because without my money, that would have never happened.
Dean Becker: Well, and it’s not just D.C. I mean, you’ve been involved in Israel trying to educate and motivate people there…
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, a couple things there, we use to sponsor the Israeli Marijuana Party, called the Green Leaf Party. An excellent group of people led by Boaz Wachtel and in 2003 we gave three thousand dollars. We gave money to a Peace Conference in 2006 at Jerusalem University. So, you know, we have been involved in campaigns all over the world.
One of the great bits of journalism we did was interviewing Evo Morales before he became President of Bolivia, back when he was head of the Coca Farmer’s Union. We paid for people to go to Columbia to witness the destructive effects of the aerial spraying under Plan Columbia.
We were a wide reaching political entity. We fielded full slated candidates here, in the British Columbia Provincial Election in 2001, seventy-nine candidates. Cost me a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to launch a Marijuana Party that would compete at every level, here in British Columbia; and it goes on and on.
We paid for class actions suits against the U.S. Federal Government out of Philadelphia, to bring back the Compassionate Use of Marijuana program that currently Elvy Musikka and Irv Rosenfeld benefit by. But you know, we wanted to expand that. We sued the government. We went to the Canadian Supreme Court to legalize marijuana in 2003 and I paid for eighty-five thousand dollars to do that, over an eight year period.
I gave money to ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska several years, and Washington D.C. and this sort of thing, and New Mexico and so, we were giving money out all over the world, but particularly in the United States and Canada over a ten year period. That, along with our pride, at doing all this, and we also heckled the Drug Czar when he came here in November 2002. He never forgave us for that and we earned the ire of pretty well every major authority in that regard. The DEA and the Attorney Generals office and the Drug Czar’s office and consequently we were targeted for that activism.
Dean Becker: That’s the thing. They can’t answer with words. They can only answer with a fist and that’s what a…
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, and that’s why I’ve ended up pleading guilty for this one count of distributing marijuana and taking this five year sentence which hopefully, I’ll be able to transfer back to Canada in a year or two to our system here. Or, I’ll be in the U.S. Prison system for four years and a month, ’cause I’ve already got fifty-two days credit for being incarcerated up here, in the pre-trial at North Frasier, waiting to be extradited.
I’m just out on bail for a couple of weeks, but basically he said, ‘Listen, these three charges you’ve got against you; manufacture, distribution and money laundering’ - and the money laundering’s all the money we gave away, right, to all these great causes… Well, there’s mandatory minimum of twenty years there and they’re saying I’m not necessarily at the low end of things. So it’s somewhere between forty/fifty years, well when they’re doing that, you know, you agree to things like ‘five years for one count’ type of thing, so that’s what’s going on here.
But, Canadians are still very disturbed by this and so are many of my American supporters. Millions of my supporters in America and Canada are disturbed by it and a lot has been done actually. We’ve sold hundreds, if not over a thousand ‘Free Marc’ tee-shirts. Tommy Chong’s been wearing his on the Jimmy Fallon show…
Dean Becker: I’ve seen.
Mr. Marc Emery: …and Bill O’Reilly and CSNBC and big concerts. He’s wearing it at the Cannabis Cup. He’s just doing whatever he can and Tommy’s been a terrific friend and he’s been a terrific activist since he, himself was put in jail, in 2002. He’s never forgotten that. He’s written books about it and it changed his life. Probably for the better, because it made him a really incredible activist.
He’s really healthy. Tommy looks so good and having such fun on his tours with Cheech Marin. So, and they’ll be doing yet another tour and they’ve been doing a lot of television lately and promotion of the tour. So they’re a big deal again and Tommy’s doing full advantage of that to promote the fact that I’m facing imminent incarceration and that we’re both Vancouver people, so…
Dean Becker: Yeah, yeah. OK. Once again, we’re speaking with Mr. Marc Emery, of Cannabis Culture, in dire straits because of U.S. desire to lock him up for seeds, my friends.
Marc, I know money is important and perhaps folks can go to your website and purchase a shirt, or help in other ways, but support; contacting elected officials, is also important as well, on your behalf. Right?
Mr. Marc Emery: We actually have an article at cannabisculture.com called “75 Things You Can Do To Free Marc Emery” and they appeal to people’s passions and talents. So if you’re a songwriter and you know about my work for the last twenty years or you’ve been witness to it, you know, then write a beautiful song. Over twenty songs about me are out there and we love them all because they all commend my activism; and my work; and what I’m doing; and how important I am to that particular artist, and if you’re a stencil maker or a poster maker, make a poster for us and let people download it. Or if you’re good at organizing demonstrations or rally’s, we…
The most amazing bit of activism I saw in my recent fifty-two day stint in jail, was there was a vigil. A full time massive tent city vigil outside of the prison I was at. For forty-five days straight, 24 hours a day, everyday. They had a port-a-potty there. A space heater run by propane. They had at least six to eight big tents there. An information booth and posters all over the place, along the street, pointing out that I was in jail unjustly.
I’m hoping something can be arranged for near the FCI that I’m at, when I get sent somewhere in the United States, that American supporters will develop kind of a vigil area around the prison, to let people know I’m inside, as they have always done in Canada. There was a vigil for fifty-six days, when I was sentenced to three months jail time for passing a joint in Saskatoon, in 2004. I was in jail for sixty-two days and the vigil was out there through blizzard, rain, hail, and sun, for fifty-seven days in a row.
Those are really great things to see, and I got letters, from people all over the United States, in jail and I sure look forward to it, ‘cause they’re quite welcome and people from America would send me books and what have you, too. So once I’m in the United States, hopefully the activists will become more substantial to repatriate me back to Canada, under our treaty system of prison transfers. Even though there’ll be hostility about it from the Canadian Government, because they’re run by republican Bush-type people now in our government, here.
So in Canada, we’re going backwards in regards to prohibition, while in the United States there tends to be a movement to greater modernization, or liberalization. Especially under President Obama. It’s quite evident that medical marijuana will be allowed to prosper, without federal interference, in a much better way than was possible under George Bush.
So, there’s lots of good things coming out of America. You know coffee shops being covered under democracy now in Portland, Oregon, run by NORML. That’s awesome to see political organizations move it up a notch, right and start doing some physical things. So I think Oregon NORML opening a Cannabis Café in Portland is a great turn of events.
I thing we‘re going to see an election - a vote of some kind in California, to legalize marijuana at some point in the next twelve months. Whether in the State, House, or in the ballot and of course many states are going to have to let out prisoners for marijuana, at the state level, because they’re suffering from such financial shortfalls. So, we might get some justice yet.
________________
Dean Becker: We’ll be right back here in just a bit, with Mr. Marc Emery.
________________
We are the plant police
With each arrest we bring peace
We fight eternal war so you can never score
Yes, we are the plant police
________
Pot stinks up your car
Pot lingers, enticing narcs
Pot stinks a lot
It’s why you might get caught
It takes a lot of pot
Takes a lot of pot
So much pot
________________
Dean Becker: Alright Marc, I hope I didn’t hurt your ears.
Mr. Marc Emery: Yeah, what was that anyway?
Dean Becker: That was me, just kind of… pot stinks, stinks up your car, it entices narcs. I don’t know, it’s just… {chuckling from both} … I don’t know. Middle of the night, you know. Maybe just smoked a doobie. There it is… and that’s the thing that people talk about. ‘Well we can’t allow it, just can’t allow it.’ But the fact is that, much of rock music and probably paintings, and much of art and inspiration, is derived from the use of Cannabis. But your thoughts on that, Marc?
Mr. Marc Emery: Well actually, I often say that in my speeches. When I was on my farewell tour across Canada, which people can Google youtube and find a lot of those speeches at the… kind of my two to three hour marathon talk about why marijuana’s important and why we’re the most persecuted culture on Earth, as a consequence of marijuana’s importance, and I bring that up all the time that every major musical form has benefited extensively by Cannabis, to the degree that ninety percent of what most of us listen to on the radio, on our MP3, in our musical collections at home, it’s all inspired by marijuana.
From the Beatles, to Led Zeppelin, to the Rolling Stones, to Green Day, to Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, to every genre. Most rock n’ roll is inspired by marijuana. Most jazz is inspired by marijuana. Certainly the blues. Certainly all reggae music is inspired by marijuana and so, you’re looking at every major musical black form; rock n’ roll form; dance form; being inspired and informed by marijuana use. I mean, jazz music is basically the music of the reefer. It was developed by people smoking pot in the delta regions. Black people smoking pot in the delta regions and coming up with a new musical form that defied previous convention.
That’s what pot does, in essence, to all human beings. As soon as you smoke marijuana, you criticize all the common conventions and assume truths that are out there and you realize there’s a tremendous amount of lies and hypocrisy in the straight world, that marijuana helps you see, and that’s why marijuana is basically outlawed because it cultivates critical thinker’s. It makes people go against dogma and a government, more than anything else, thrives on obedient and compliant populations.
Usually the most dangerous person to any government is a journalist. Because journalist’s probe for the truth and try and tell it to the people. Which usually the truth always goes against what the government is doing. Because the government is never truthful, never honest, never candid. It’s always political and politics is the art of shielding the truth from the people.
So, you’ve got to understand that marijuana creates dissident citizens, critical thinkers, reluctant soldiers in any kind of war. We’re all about one love, passivism, ~~ and where you don’t believe in any of those things. We don’t believe those are kind barriers that are healthy in a society. We’re looking for solutions for ideas for clues to the truth.
So governments don’t thrive on those kind of people. So they try and eliminate them through stigmatization first and then ostracization and then concentration - putting us in jails, and then finally extermination. So we’re somewhere between that second and third phase right now. Except, we also have lots of enlightenment going on in society, where medical study after medical study shows that marijuana is a wonder cure for so many things.
Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, aids wasting syndrome. It will help alleviate multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, crohn’s disease, autism. I mean it’s staggering. The benefits to one single plant like marijuana, is certainly beyond any other plant on Earth, in the utility and usefulness and yet, handed down like a scourge. It’s all because of the critical faculties that are unleashed in our consciousness when we smoke marijuana.
Dean Becker: Right, right. I want to say this. I bring it up every time because it’s important to me, because I want people to know. That thanks to Marc Emery, his support - it’s now been five/six years ago…
Mr. Marc Emery: Yep.
Dean Becker: …but he helped me get over a hump; a bad situation. Because, like I think I told him, there is no electricity under the bridge and I needed to keep a roof over my head and keep things going and thanks to his help, I did. I want to announce this and I don’t have the call letters with me, but I was in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago and while I was there, I picked up my seventy-first broadcast affiliate. It’s a TV station that going to carry Drug Truth Network videos.
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, I was happy to help contribute when you needed it. That’s what we did. We gave away four million dollars, you know, to people at ballot initiatives, in many states. To Marijuana Policy Project, when they were starting out. You, when you needed money and hundreds of other great activist groups and the philosophy behind giving that money out was, ‘You know what? I think I’ve got a good idea. But what if I don’t have a good idea and I use all my money for my idea, and I fail? Wouldn’t it be better to give the money out to a hundred different organizations?‘ - in fact, three hundred and fifty different organizations, ‘…and see if ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred of them have a good idea. Because if I finance it and it goes somewhere, it will create a revolution. That will be perfect, peaceful, botanical, democratic, you know. This is a perfect revolution to have and it can be financed by the peaceful advocacy of these seeds, to grow more plants.’ It’s absolutely perfect from beginning to end.
So, that’s what we had in mind and it was a very successful, peaceful revolution and has changed the world. When I first started in 1990, in Vancouver for example, there wasn’t a single rally to legalize marijuana for the entire decade, 1980 to 1990. This was true in much of Canada and they even banned and outlawed books and magazines on marijuana, in Canada, for eight years. The situation had gotten so terrible.
Since then, we’ve seen an awful lot of progress and although we’re battling some backward legislation now - mandatory minimum jail sentences. We’ve had a lot of success in getting things on the ballots in the United States, in courts in the United States, helping out people. Even just paying for lawyers for people who were sentenced, who didn’t have good council.
I remember that fellow named Webster Alexander. Got ninety years, jail. Because he sold two ounces of pot to an undercover, near a school, and near some kind of child center, and then getting all these enhancements. Adding up to ninety years and then finally the judge lowered it to thirty-six years and we brought so much attention to this. (We) had Rolling Stone go interview the judge and a whole bunch of media descend on this small place, in Moulton, Alabama, and the judge changed his mind and gave the fellow one year, to be served on weekends. All the way down from ninety years then to thirty-six years then to a year on weekends. Which is still a lot for a young fellow, just showing an undercover a couple bags of weed.
But nonetheless, the things we were able to achieve. My representative at the time, Loretta Knoll in Alabama, was able to get all the media corralled and down to that courtroom and put pressure on them and probably saved a kids life. That’s just one of many, many things we did with the money we had, if we got attention to the issues in play. We paid for the global marijuana march, for example. Every year from 1999 to 2005. That was thirty-five thousand dollars for posters to be shipped off to two hundred and fifty cities, in seven languages, all over the world and coordinating all that, that sort of thing.
The money went to spectacular and amazing things. Drug addiction clinics ran the ibogaine Iboga therapy house for two years, at a quarter of a million dollars cost. I was a pioneer in Ibogaine therapy and now, it was on Law and Order SVU the other day, with a wonderful message that Ibogaine is the greatest chance of a cure-all for drug addiction that we have - and I believe that, and I pioneered the work for that in North America.
Jody wants me to remind people too, that I have twenty-five thousand dollars for the first Nevada Legalization Initiative in 2002 and huge amounts of money and ten thousand dollars to the Arizona initiative in 2000. Started the U.S. Marijuana Party. Started the Canadian Marijuana Parties and financed them. An endless amount of things that our money went to.
So the DEA felt that they needed to stop that and it shows up in head of the DEA, Karen Tandy’s, press release on the day I was arrested. It’s all about my legalization activities. Nothing about victims, ‘cause there are no victims. There’s not anybody saying I victimized them. Alright, nobody’s saying they were not happy to get my seeds and the only people that would be unhappy to say that, would be a DEA agent buying them undercover, right? So, American’s that I dealt with, loved what I was doing.
So my argument’s with the U.S. Government and it’s terrible war on drugs and it’s always been there going {sound effect of throat being slashed}. But you know, I believe I’ll have substantial support in the United States while I’m incarcerated and a lot of people will be lobbying on my behalf and I’m urging them to do that by finding out where I am at cannabisculture.com.
One of the fascinating things is, when they pursued John Lennon, the US Federal Government produced over four thousand, eight hundred pages of material that they had been researching on. Martin Luther King had a similar amount, about five thousand pages. You know the Canadian government already has six thousand pages on my activities, from surveilling me and being in contact with the U.S. and what have it.
So at six thousand pages and we asked for them, under a Freedom of Information Request and every single word is blocked out, of all six thousand pages {laughter from Dean} and two thousand pages of those, because it goes to a foreign state, the U.S. But you can see from a very early age, from 2002. Right after I had called John Walters, the U.S. Drug Czar, on a visit here in Vancouver.
The Canadian government, the American government and all the associated police agencies were all conspiring to gather evidence, so I would be tried in the United States. Including the Canadian government at the time, the Vancouver police, actively worked to collaborate with the U.S. government, to get me charge there and not here, and there’s six thousand pages that people should be asking for. In face, I think a U.S. request from a journalist, to the state department or justice department. Ask for all the pages on it’s attempt to bring Emery to the United States, would be fascinating and that people should do that.
Dean Becker: I think they should. Marc, we are flat out of time. Sounds like the…
Mr. Marc Emery: Good talking to you.
Dean Becker: Oh, you bet, my friend. It sounds like they’re just running the printer out of ink, with all those blacked out names.
Mr. Marc Emery: Oh, well. Imagine the millions they’re spending to arrest the guy who’s basic message is: Think for yourself.
Dean Becker: Exactly. Marc, one more time. Your website, please.
Mr. Marc Emery: cannabisculture.com and we’re working on freemarc.ca and NoExtradition.net. But cannabisculture.com and youtube.com/pottvnetwork. We have hundreds and hundreds of videos showing all my work. My addiction clinics that I ran. All the great crusades I’ve been involved with. My summer of legalization tour, where I smoked out eighteen police stations, across Canada in 2003. It’s all in video and there’s new ones going up all the time. So that’s youtube.com/pottvnetwork.
Dean Becker: Marc, say ‘Hi’ to your beautiful wife and we will be in touch and will be updating folks, as things go along. Thank you.
Mr. Marc Emery: Alright, thanks.
Dean Becker: Alright. Bye, bye.
________________
What god’s do make America so great?
It’s guns, it’s oil, it’s drugs, it’s slaves.
________________
{guitar accompaniment}
If they stop Afghanistan from growing Opium
And they cut down the Columbian Cocaine
When Mexico runs out of Marijuana
They think we’ll quit getting high
But the drug store on the corner’s standing by.
Cut me loose, set me free
Judge what I do, not what I put inside of me
Why do you pick my pocket
Just let me light my rocket
Who died and made you the boss of me?
Get out of my life
Let me be.
Pfizer and Merck kill more of us
Than the cartel’s crap ever could
They thank us for our silence,
Each years hundred billion dollars
And the chance to do it forever more.
Drugs, the first eternal war.
Cut me loose, set me free
Judge what I do, not what I put inside of me
Why do you pick my pocket
Just let me light my rocket
Who died and made you the boss of me?
Get out of my life
Let me be.
Are we just peasants in the field?
Let’s stand for truth or forever kneel
Every sixteen seconds we hear the slamming door
And we owe it all, to eternal war.
The first, eternal war.
________________
Five times as many people die from alcohol each year, than from elicit drugs and the misuse of pharmaceuticals. Fifteen times as many people die each year from poor diet and activity patters. Twenty times as many people die from tobacco.
Why arrest one point nine million people a year, for drugs? Does jailing drug users make more sense, than jailing overweight people and smokers?
Let’s keep America’s drug problem in perspective.
Common Sense For Drug Policy csdp.org
________________
Thank you for joining us on Century or Lies. Enjoy the discussion with Mr. Marc Emery. Once again, his website: cannabisculture.com. Please, tune in. See if you can help in some kind of way and keep yourself involved in exposing this drug war.
As always, I remind you, there is not truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, medical data. No reason for this drug war to exist. We have been duped. The drug lords run both sides of this equation. Visit our website: endprohibition.org
Prohibido istac evilesco.
________
(David Bowie’s “Heroes” )
We can beat them
for ever and ever
Oh, we can be Heroes
Just for one day
Thank you for listening to the Drug Truth Network during ‘Heroes week‘. Canadian Marc Emery, wanted for selling marijuana seeds to U.S. citizens and Irvin Rosenfeld, not wanted for smoking marijuana, supplied by the U.S. government.
Both Heroes. Waiting for you, to become a Hero.
________________
Transcript
Century of Lies, November 29, 2009
________________
(David Bowie’s “Heroes” plays in the background)
Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. Today, our guest - another Hero of mine, Mr. Marc Emery. A Canadian who dared to sell millions of marijuana seeds to U.S. consumers and who now faces years in a U.S. prison for doing so.
Though nothing will
Drive them away
We can beat them
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
________________
We can be heroes, like our friends. Marc Emery, he’s been a friend to me. He’s been a hero to me for years and I can’t get over the fact that the United States Government called him, “One of the big drug king-pins” and they wanted to arrest him and bring him to trial in America. I don’t think it was for the same reason but, it has a little bit of the echo’s of going after Tommy Chong, for his notoriety. But Tommy’s notoriety was for something else.
Marc’s notoriety has been… for you; for me; for progress; for the truth. He’s been speaking on our behalf for most, if not all, his adult life. Been working to make the truth available. To put people in place, to pay for events; to make it possible to bring that truth forward.
I tell you what. I want to share this with you. This kind of explains the problem, you know, the belief system of America. The inability to really look at what’s before our eyes. Laura, let’s share that.
________________
(musical accompaniment)
A cadre of devious idiots
Set about to control the world.
They plundered their nations treasury
Handed it to forces
Both dark and personal
Fear and hatred is their mantra
Death and disease, their tools.
They continue blasts of obligation
‘Cause at the heart we’re a
God-damn bunch of fools.
We don’t know much, you and I
Trust and obey and then we wonder why
The agents of terror, of blunders and errors
Stand before us with a blank check for us to sign
________________
Alright, you are listening to the Century of Lies on the Drug Truth Network. I’m happy that we do have Mr. Marc Emery online and without much delay… Marc, are you with us?
Mr. Marc Emery: I am. How are you?
Dean Becker: I’m well, Marc. Good to have your voice on the airwaves again. It’s so nice to hear your out.
Mr. Marc Emery: Though we don’t know how long I’ll be able to say that, too, you know. I could get extradited to the United States, at a courtroom in Seattle. I’ll be in Sea-Tac pre-trial for four to six, possibly eight weeks, before I’m sent to a federal correctional institution, known as a penitentiary, somewhere in the United States. So, I’d probably only be up and around, speaking like this, for the next two or three days.
Dean Becker: Marc, while we were trying to reach you, I told the folks a bit about… that probably most, if not all, your adult life, you’d been working to share and bring the truth in focus.
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, two things happened to me that were pivotal in my lifestyle. Thirty years ago, I first discovered Ayn Rand in the summer of 1980 and I first started smoking marijuana in December 1980 and those two combined have basically alchemy, that kind of alchemy’s led to about thirty years of non-stop activism on behalf of liberty and for the last twenty years, against marijuana prohibition.
Dean Becker: As I was telling the audience, that there’s not the direct correlation, Tommy Chong was chosen for his celebrity, but for a different sub-text, if you will. In your case, it was your celebrity and the fact that you were working to get that truth pushed to the front. Right?
Mr. Marc Emery: Well you know, I’ve got this great resume of an extraordinary career. You know, we put out seventy-four issues of a truth telling magazine, Cannabis Culture. Three thousand videos from the year 2000 to 2006, on Pot TV. I gave away four million dollars from 1995 to 2005 and they paid for incredible things. You know, one of the great things is, it’s still paying off dividends because only six months ago the congress repealed the bar amendment, which forbade the District of Columbia from having a medical marijuana law.
Well you know, in 1998 I paid five thousand dollars to get petitioners out to get enough signatures to put that on the ballot. So the money I donated, to activities in the United States, are still paying off because I was the principle funder of the Washington D.C. Ballot Initiative in 1998, which congress intercepted with by passing the bar amendment. But that was repealed six months ago so now we have medical marijuana in Washington D.C.
That’s the kind of thing that my money went to and there‘s a good example of something good coming from it. That benefits people now. So, if some member of Congress, or member of the Senate, or member of the president’s staff actually goes to get marijuana, in the district of Columbia and they can do so legally, then they owe that to me. Because without my money, that would have never happened.
Dean Becker: Well, and it’s not just D.C. I mean, you’ve been involved in Israel trying to educate and motivate people there…
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, a couple things there, we use to sponsor the Israeli Marijuana Party, called the Green Leaf Party. An excellent group of people led by Boaz Wachtel and in 2003 we gave three thousand dollars. We gave money to a Peace Conference in 2006 at Jerusalem University. So, you know, we have been involved in campaigns all over the world.
One of the great bits of journalism we did was interviewing Evo Morales before he became President of Bolivia, back when he was head of the Coca Farmer’s Union. We paid for people to go to Columbia to witness the destructive effects of the aerial spraying under Plan Columbia.
We were a wide reaching political entity. We fielded full slated candidates here, in the British Columbia Provincial Election in 2001, seventy-nine candidates. Cost me a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to launch a Marijuana Party that would compete at every level, here in British Columbia; and it goes on and on.
We paid for class actions suits against the U.S. Federal Government out of Philadelphia, to bring back the Compassionate Use of Marijuana program that currently Elvy Musikka and Irv Rosenfeld benefit by. But you know, we wanted to expand that. We sued the government. We went to the Canadian Supreme Court to legalize marijuana in 2003 and I paid for eighty-five thousand dollars to do that, over an eight year period.
I gave money to ballot initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska several years, and Washington D.C. and this sort of thing, and New Mexico and so, we were giving money out all over the world, but particularly in the United States and Canada over a ten year period. That, along with our pride, at doing all this, and we also heckled the Drug Czar when he came here in November 2002. He never forgave us for that and we earned the ire of pretty well every major authority in that regard. The DEA and the Attorney Generals office and the Drug Czar’s office and consequently we were targeted for that activism.
Dean Becker: That’s the thing. They can’t answer with words. They can only answer with a fist and that’s what a…
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, and that’s why I’ve ended up pleading guilty for this one count of distributing marijuana and taking this five year sentence which hopefully, I’ll be able to transfer back to Canada in a year or two to our system here. Or, I’ll be in the U.S. Prison system for four years and a month, ’cause I’ve already got fifty-two days credit for being incarcerated up here, in the pre-trial at North Frasier, waiting to be extradited.
I’m just out on bail for a couple of weeks, but basically he said, ‘Listen, these three charges you’ve got against you; manufacture, distribution and money laundering’ - and the money laundering’s all the money we gave away, right, to all these great causes… Well, there’s mandatory minimum of twenty years there and they’re saying I’m not necessarily at the low end of things. So it’s somewhere between forty/fifty years, well when they’re doing that, you know, you agree to things like ‘five years for one count’ type of thing, so that’s what’s going on here.
But, Canadians are still very disturbed by this and so are many of my American supporters. Millions of my supporters in America and Canada are disturbed by it and a lot has been done actually. We’ve sold hundreds, if not over a thousand ‘Free Marc’ tee-shirts. Tommy Chong’s been wearing his on the Jimmy Fallon show…
Dean Becker: I’ve seen.
Mr. Marc Emery: …and Bill O’Reilly and CSNBC and big concerts. He’s wearing it at the Cannabis Cup. He’s just doing whatever he can and Tommy’s been a terrific friend and he’s been a terrific activist since he, himself was put in jail, in 2002. He’s never forgotten that. He’s written books about it and it changed his life. Probably for the better, because it made him a really incredible activist.
He’s really healthy. Tommy looks so good and having such fun on his tours with Cheech Marin. So, and they’ll be doing yet another tour and they’ve been doing a lot of television lately and promotion of the tour. So they’re a big deal again and Tommy’s doing full advantage of that to promote the fact that I’m facing imminent incarceration and that we’re both Vancouver people, so…
Dean Becker: Yeah, yeah. OK. Once again, we’re speaking with Mr. Marc Emery, of Cannabis Culture, in dire straits because of U.S. desire to lock him up for seeds, my friends.
Marc, I know money is important and perhaps folks can go to your website and purchase a shirt, or help in other ways, but support; contacting elected officials, is also important as well, on your behalf. Right?
Mr. Marc Emery: We actually have an article at cannabisculture.com called “75 Things You Can Do To Free Marc Emery” and they appeal to people’s passions and talents. So if you’re a songwriter and you know about my work for the last twenty years or you’ve been witness to it, you know, then write a beautiful song. Over twenty songs about me are out there and we love them all because they all commend my activism; and my work; and what I’m doing; and how important I am to that particular artist, and if you’re a stencil maker or a poster maker, make a poster for us and let people download it. Or if you’re good at organizing demonstrations or rally’s, we…
The most amazing bit of activism I saw in my recent fifty-two day stint in jail, was there was a vigil. A full time massive tent city vigil outside of the prison I was at. For forty-five days straight, 24 hours a day, everyday. They had a port-a-potty there. A space heater run by propane. They had at least six to eight big tents there. An information booth and posters all over the place, along the street, pointing out that I was in jail unjustly.
I’m hoping something can be arranged for near the FCI that I’m at, when I get sent somewhere in the United States, that American supporters will develop kind of a vigil area around the prison, to let people know I’m inside, as they have always done in Canada. There was a vigil for fifty-six days, when I was sentenced to three months jail time for passing a joint in Saskatoon, in 2004. I was in jail for sixty-two days and the vigil was out there through blizzard, rain, hail, and sun, for fifty-seven days in a row.
Those are really great things to see, and I got letters, from people all over the United States, in jail and I sure look forward to it, ‘cause they’re quite welcome and people from America would send me books and what have you, too. So once I’m in the United States, hopefully the activists will become more substantial to repatriate me back to Canada, under our treaty system of prison transfers. Even though there’ll be hostility about it from the Canadian Government, because they’re run by republican Bush-type people now in our government, here.
So in Canada, we’re going backwards in regards to prohibition, while in the United States there tends to be a movement to greater modernization, or liberalization. Especially under President Obama. It’s quite evident that medical marijuana will be allowed to prosper, without federal interference, in a much better way than was possible under George Bush.
So, there’s lots of good things coming out of America. You know coffee shops being covered under democracy now in Portland, Oregon, run by NORML. That’s awesome to see political organizations move it up a notch, right and start doing some physical things. So I think Oregon NORML opening a Cannabis Café in Portland is a great turn of events.
I thing we‘re going to see an election - a vote of some kind in California, to legalize marijuana at some point in the next twelve months. Whether in the State, House, or in the ballot and of course many states are going to have to let out prisoners for marijuana, at the state level, because they’re suffering from such financial shortfalls. So, we might get some justice yet.
________________
Dean Becker: We’ll be right back here in just a bit, with Mr. Marc Emery.
________________
We are the plant police
With each arrest we bring peace
We fight eternal war so you can never score
Yes, we are the plant police
________
Pot stinks up your car
Pot lingers, enticing narcs
Pot stinks a lot
It’s why you might get caught
It takes a lot of pot
Takes a lot of pot
So much pot
________________
Dean Becker: Alright Marc, I hope I didn’t hurt your ears.
Mr. Marc Emery: Yeah, what was that anyway?
Dean Becker: That was me, just kind of… pot stinks, stinks up your car, it entices narcs. I don’t know, it’s just… {chuckling from both} … I don’t know. Middle of the night, you know. Maybe just smoked a doobie. There it is… and that’s the thing that people talk about. ‘Well we can’t allow it, just can’t allow it.’ But the fact is that, much of rock music and probably paintings, and much of art and inspiration, is derived from the use of Cannabis. But your thoughts on that, Marc?
Mr. Marc Emery: Well actually, I often say that in my speeches. When I was on my farewell tour across Canada, which people can Google youtube and find a lot of those speeches at the… kind of my two to three hour marathon talk about why marijuana’s important and why we’re the most persecuted culture on Earth, as a consequence of marijuana’s importance, and I bring that up all the time that every major musical form has benefited extensively by Cannabis, to the degree that ninety percent of what most of us listen to on the radio, on our MP3, in our musical collections at home, it’s all inspired by marijuana.
From the Beatles, to Led Zeppelin, to the Rolling Stones, to Green Day, to Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, to every genre. Most rock n’ roll is inspired by marijuana. Most jazz is inspired by marijuana. Certainly the blues. Certainly all reggae music is inspired by marijuana and so, you’re looking at every major musical black form; rock n’ roll form; dance form; being inspired and informed by marijuana use. I mean, jazz music is basically the music of the reefer. It was developed by people smoking pot in the delta regions. Black people smoking pot in the delta regions and coming up with a new musical form that defied previous convention.
That’s what pot does, in essence, to all human beings. As soon as you smoke marijuana, you criticize all the common conventions and assume truths that are out there and you realize there’s a tremendous amount of lies and hypocrisy in the straight world, that marijuana helps you see, and that’s why marijuana is basically outlawed because it cultivates critical thinker’s. It makes people go against dogma and a government, more than anything else, thrives on obedient and compliant populations.
Usually the most dangerous person to any government is a journalist. Because journalist’s probe for the truth and try and tell it to the people. Which usually the truth always goes against what the government is doing. Because the government is never truthful, never honest, never candid. It’s always political and politics is the art of shielding the truth from the people.
So, you’ve got to understand that marijuana creates dissident citizens, critical thinkers, reluctant soldiers in any kind of war. We’re all about one love, passivism, ~~ and where you don’t believe in any of those things. We don’t believe those are kind barriers that are healthy in a society. We’re looking for solutions for ideas for clues to the truth.
So governments don’t thrive on those kind of people. So they try and eliminate them through stigmatization first and then ostracization and then concentration - putting us in jails, and then finally extermination. So we’re somewhere between that second and third phase right now. Except, we also have lots of enlightenment going on in society, where medical study after medical study shows that marijuana is a wonder cure for so many things.
Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, aids wasting syndrome. It will help alleviate multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, crohn’s disease, autism. I mean it’s staggering. The benefits to one single plant like marijuana, is certainly beyond any other plant on Earth, in the utility and usefulness and yet, handed down like a scourge. It’s all because of the critical faculties that are unleashed in our consciousness when we smoke marijuana.
Dean Becker: Right, right. I want to say this. I bring it up every time because it’s important to me, because I want people to know. That thanks to Marc Emery, his support - it’s now been five/six years ago…
Mr. Marc Emery: Yep.
Dean Becker: …but he helped me get over a hump; a bad situation. Because, like I think I told him, there is no electricity under the bridge and I needed to keep a roof over my head and keep things going and thanks to his help, I did. I want to announce this and I don’t have the call letters with me, but I was in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago and while I was there, I picked up my seventy-first broadcast affiliate. It’s a TV station that going to carry Drug Truth Network videos.
Mr. Marc Emery: Well, I was happy to help contribute when you needed it. That’s what we did. We gave away four million dollars, you know, to people at ballot initiatives, in many states. To Marijuana Policy Project, when they were starting out. You, when you needed money and hundreds of other great activist groups and the philosophy behind giving that money out was, ‘You know what? I think I’ve got a good idea. But what if I don’t have a good idea and I use all my money for my idea, and I fail? Wouldn’t it be better to give the money out to a hundred different organizations?‘ - in fact, three hundred and fifty different organizations, ‘…and see if ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred of them have a good idea. Because if I finance it and it goes somewhere, it will create a revolution. That will be perfect, peaceful, botanical, democratic, you know. This is a perfect revolution to have and it can be financed by the peaceful advocacy of these seeds, to grow more plants.’ It’s absolutely perfect from beginning to end.
So, that’s what we had in mind and it was a very successful, peaceful revolution and has changed the world. When I first started in 1990, in Vancouver for example, there wasn’t a single rally to legalize marijuana for the entire decade, 1980 to 1990. This was true in much of Canada and they even banned and outlawed books and magazines on marijuana, in Canada, for eight years. The situation had gotten so terrible.
Since then, we’ve seen an awful lot of progress and although we’re battling some backward legislation now - mandatory minimum jail sentences. We’ve had a lot of success in getting things on the ballots in the United States, in courts in the United States, helping out people. Even just paying for lawyers for people who were sentenced, who didn’t have good council.
I remember that fellow named Webster Alexander. Got ninety years, jail. Because he sold two ounces of pot to an undercover, near a school, and near some kind of child center, and then getting all these enhancements. Adding up to ninety years and then finally the judge lowered it to thirty-six years and we brought so much attention to this. (We) had Rolling Stone go interview the judge and a whole bunch of media descend on this small place, in Moulton, Alabama, and the judge changed his mind and gave the fellow one year, to be served on weekends. All the way down from ninety years then to thirty-six years then to a year on weekends. Which is still a lot for a young fellow, just showing an undercover a couple bags of weed.
But nonetheless, the things we were able to achieve. My representative at the time, Loretta Knoll in Alabama, was able to get all the media corralled and down to that courtroom and put pressure on them and probably saved a kids life. That’s just one of many, many things we did with the money we had, if we got attention to the issues in play. We paid for the global marijuana march, for example. Every year from 1999 to 2005. That was thirty-five thousand dollars for posters to be shipped off to two hundred and fifty cities, in seven languages, all over the world and coordinating all that, that sort of thing.
The money went to spectacular and amazing things. Drug addiction clinics ran the ibogaine Iboga therapy house for two years, at a quarter of a million dollars cost. I was a pioneer in Ibogaine therapy and now, it was on Law and Order SVU the other day, with a wonderful message that Ibogaine is the greatest chance of a cure-all for drug addiction that we have - and I believe that, and I pioneered the work for that in North America.
Jody wants me to remind people too, that I have twenty-five thousand dollars for the first Nevada Legalization Initiative in 2002 and huge amounts of money and ten thousand dollars to the Arizona initiative in 2000. Started the U.S. Marijuana Party. Started the Canadian Marijuana Parties and financed them. An endless amount of things that our money went to.
So the DEA felt that they needed to stop that and it shows up in head of the DEA, Karen Tandy’s, press release on the day I was arrested. It’s all about my legalization activities. Nothing about victims, ‘cause there are no victims. There’s not anybody saying I victimized them. Alright, nobody’s saying they were not happy to get my seeds and the only people that would be unhappy to say that, would be a DEA agent buying them undercover, right? So, American’s that I dealt with, loved what I was doing.
So my argument’s with the U.S. Government and it’s terrible war on drugs and it’s always been there going {sound effect of throat being slashed}. But you know, I believe I’ll have substantial support in the United States while I’m incarcerated and a lot of people will be lobbying on my behalf and I’m urging them to do that by finding out where I am at cannabisculture.com.
One of the fascinating things is, when they pursued John Lennon, the US Federal Government produced over four thousand, eight hundred pages of material that they had been researching on. Martin Luther King had a similar amount, about five thousand pages. You know the Canadian government already has six thousand pages on my activities, from surveilling me and being in contact with the U.S. and what have it.
So at six thousand pages and we asked for them, under a Freedom of Information Request and every single word is blocked out, of all six thousand pages {laughter from Dean} and two thousand pages of those, because it goes to a foreign state, the U.S. But you can see from a very early age, from 2002. Right after I had called John Walters, the U.S. Drug Czar, on a visit here in Vancouver.
The Canadian government, the American government and all the associated police agencies were all conspiring to gather evidence, so I would be tried in the United States. Including the Canadian government at the time, the Vancouver police, actively worked to collaborate with the U.S. government, to get me charge there and not here, and there’s six thousand pages that people should be asking for. In face, I think a U.S. request from a journalist, to the state department or justice department. Ask for all the pages on it’s attempt to bring Emery to the United States, would be fascinating and that people should do that.
Dean Becker: I think they should. Marc, we are flat out of time. Sounds like the…
Mr. Marc Emery: Good talking to you.
Dean Becker: Oh, you bet, my friend. It sounds like they’re just running the printer out of ink, with all those blacked out names.
Mr. Marc Emery: Oh, well. Imagine the millions they’re spending to arrest the guy who’s basic message is: Think for yourself.
Dean Becker: Exactly. Marc, one more time. Your website, please.
Mr. Marc Emery: cannabisculture.com and we’re working on freemarc.ca and NoExtradition.net. But cannabisculture.com and youtube.com/pottvnetwork. We have hundreds and hundreds of videos showing all my work. My addiction clinics that I ran. All the great crusades I’ve been involved with. My summer of legalization tour, where I smoked out eighteen police stations, across Canada in 2003. It’s all in video and there’s new ones going up all the time. So that’s youtube.com/pottvnetwork.
Dean Becker: Marc, say ‘Hi’ to your beautiful wife and we will be in touch and will be updating folks, as things go along. Thank you.
Mr. Marc Emery: Alright, thanks.
Dean Becker: Alright. Bye, bye.
________________
What god’s do make America so great?
It’s guns, it’s oil, it’s drugs, it’s slaves.
________________
{guitar accompaniment}
If they stop Afghanistan from growing Opium
And they cut down the Columbian Cocaine
When Mexico runs out of Marijuana
They think we’ll quit getting high
But the drug store on the corner’s standing by.
Cut me loose, set me free
Judge what I do, not what I put inside of me
Why do you pick my pocket
Just let me light my rocket
Who died and made you the boss of me?
Get out of my life
Let me be.
Pfizer and Merck kill more of us
Than the cartel’s crap ever could
They thank us for our silence,
Each years hundred billion dollars
And the chance to do it forever more.
Drugs, the first eternal war.
Cut me loose, set me free
Judge what I do, not what I put inside of me
Why do you pick my pocket
Just let me light my rocket
Who died and made you the boss of me?
Get out of my life
Let me be.
Are we just peasants in the field?
Let’s stand for truth or forever kneel
Every sixteen seconds we hear the slamming door
And we owe it all, to eternal war.
The first, eternal war.
________________
Five times as many people die from alcohol each year, than from elicit drugs and the misuse of pharmaceuticals. Fifteen times as many people die each year from poor diet and activity patters. Twenty times as many people die from tobacco.
Why arrest one point nine million people a year, for drugs? Does jailing drug users make more sense, than jailing overweight people and smokers?
Let’s keep America’s drug problem in perspective.
Common Sense For Drug Policy csdp.org
________________
Thank you for joining us on Century or Lies. Enjoy the discussion with Mr. Marc Emery. Once again, his website: cannabisculture.com. Please, tune in. See if you can help in some kind of way and keep yourself involved in exposing this drug war.
As always, I remind you, there is not truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, medical data. No reason for this drug war to exist. We have been duped. The drug lords run both sides of this equation. Visit our website: endprohibition.org
Prohibido istac evilesco.
________
(David Bowie’s “Heroes” )
We can beat them
for ever and ever
Oh, we can be Heroes
Just for one day
Thank you for listening to the Drug Truth Network during ‘Heroes week‘. Canadian Marc Emery, wanted for selling marijuana seeds to U.S. citizens and Irvin Rosenfeld, not wanted for smoking marijuana, supplied by the U.S. government.
Both Heroes. Waiting for you, to become a Hero.
________________
75 things you could do to help Marc Emery - direct link
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/things-you-can-do-free-marc-e…
The Century of Lies.
This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston
Transcript provided by: C. Assenberg of www.marijuanafactorfiction.org