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‘BOTANY VERSUS NAZIFIED INSTITUTIONALISM:’ EMERY
By Hempology | March 30, 2006
The ‘Prince Of Pot’ Speaks At Concordia
Appealing to Biblical scripture and citing the health benefits, Canada’s proclaimed Prince of Pot, Mark Emery, is taking on the system to legalize cannabis. But these days his pro-pot lectures are doubling up to garner support for his own personal plight–challenging extradition to the United States where he could face 35 years or more in prison for selling marijuana seeds.
“That’s longer than what I’d get for multiple murder in Canada,” Emery said during his visit to Concordia last Friday. While it is illegal to sell seeds in Canada, the largest penalty handed down has been a $200 fine.
It was perhaps a different kind of activist crowd who drifted into H-110 to see Emery speak last Friday, along with a cloud of sweet smoke. And although the topic was what is still an illegal substance in Canada and the speaker is–according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency–the “number one drug-trafficking king pin” with 30 convictions to his name, Concordia security barely batted an eyelash.
In his stream-of-conscience style lecture, the 50-year old activist who runs Pot TV and publishes Cannabis Culture Magazine compared the plight of cannabis users to cultural genocide and maintains users are the “most oppressed group of people in the world.”
Emery was all over the map when it came to justifying legalization. He looks to the book of Genesis for justification. Nowhere in the Bible, he says, does it say that any plant is forbidden. God made plants and berries, Emery continued, “and he said you should make meat of them. And on the seventh day he rested and he saw that it was all good.”
Time and again, he pointed out what he feels is hypocrisy in our country. “What kind of society do we have that I’m the biggest kingpin and I’ve never hurt anyone?” he asked. Tobacco and sugary foods are more damaging to people’s health than cannabis, he said, yet “it’s institutionalized and it’s everywhere.”
But with the four to five-million seeds Emery has sold, he proudly figures he has neutralized the efforts of close to 100,000 law enforcement officers out to eradicate marijuana. “This is botany versus Nazified institutionalism,” he said.
Emery will defend himself in Canadian court against extradition to the United States. “If this country can send me to a Gulag… they can go to hell,” he said, adding that he dared the newly elected Conservative government to go through with the extradition.
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