Marc Emery Takes Deal, Will Do Five Years In Prison

Canada's self-styled "Prince of Pot," Marc Emery, has reportedly accepted a deal offered by US prosecutors and will serve five years in prison on cannabis-related charges.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on Jan. 16, 2008 ("'Prince of Pot' Given Prison Time") that "Although the plea deal has not yet been formally adopted, Emery said Tuesday that he's agreed to the prosecution's terms: that he serve a minimum of five years behind bars. Most of that time would be done in a Canadian prison, he said. Emery had been facing a mandatory minimum term of 10 years and up to life if convicted in U.S. District Court for a crime that's rarely prosecuted in Canada. The plea agreement calls for him to plead guilty to a three-count indictment issued in 2005 by a Seattle grand jury. He was charged with manufacturing more than a ton of marijuana and conspiring to distribute seeds and launder the profits."

According to the Post-Intelligencer, "Emery said the plea deal is contingent on sparing two longtime associates, also charged in the indictment, any jail time. Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg on Tuesday declined to comment on the plea bargain outlined by Emery. He said an extradition hearing scheduled to begin Monday in Vancouver so far hasn't been canceled."

The P-I noted that "As support for his allegation that his prosecution was politically motivated, Emery prominently displays on his Web site a statement from Karen Tandy, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time. To the dismay of the federal criminal justice establishment in Seattle, Tandy issued a statement after Emery's arrest in July 2005, saying: 'Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group -- is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also the marijuana legalization movement. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on.'"

Canada: Court Ends Government Monopoly on Legal Medical Marijuana

A Canadian Federal Court ruling has struck down a provision of that country's medical marijuana law which required approved users to get their medicine from a government supplier.

According to a Canadian Press report published Jan. 11, 2008 ("Decision Opens Field for Medical Marijuana Growers"), "The decision by Judge Barry Strayer, released late Thursday, essentially grants medical marijuana users more freedom in picking their own grower and allows growers to supply the drug to more than one patient. It's also another blow to the federal government, whose attempts to tightly control access to medical marijuana have prompted numerous court challenges. Currently, medical users can grow their own pot but growers can't supply the drug to more than one user at a time."

The Canadian Press reported that "In his decision, Strayer called the provision unconstitutional and arbitrary, as it 'caused individuals a major difficulty with access. . .' Ottawa must also reconsider requests made by a group of medical users who brought the matter to court to have a single outside supplier as their designated producer, Strayer said in his 23-page decision. While the government has argued that medical users who can't grow their own marijuana can obtain it from its contract manufacturer, fewer than 20 per cent of patients actually use the government's supply, Strayer wrote. 'In my view it is not tenable for the government, consistently with the right established in other courts for qualified medical users to have reasonable access to marijuana, to force them either to buy from the government contractor, grow their own or be limited to the unnecessarily restrictive system of designated producers,' he wrote. "