The 8 Most Absurd Excuses for Trying to Defeat Legal Pot

Posted on August 22, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

As California gets set to vote on Prop 19 – an initiative to legalize marijuana statewide – some people’s minds are being completely blown, man.  But it’s not the people smoking the stuff, it’s the people trying to keep it banned.

I’ve collected the eight craziest claims about a post-legalization state of California predicted by opponents of Prop 19.  Stunningly, three of these crazy predictions come from people who do use marijuana, proving once again that with enough repetition and scaremongering, you can convince a certain percentage of any group to vote against their own best interests.

8.  The federal government will pull all its contracts with California businesses because they won’t be able to drug test employees!

This is a favorite of the California Chamber of Commerce.  The idea is that since the federal government has a Drug Free Workplace Act, when California law no longer allows employers to discriminate based on pee, all these California companies wouldn’t be able to comply and the feds would pull all their contracts and grants.

Never mind that these same opponents predicted the same dire consequence when California was considering Prop 215, the initiative that legalized medical marijuana fourteen years ago, and we haven’t seen any contracts or grants pulled since.  The plain fact is that the Drug Free Workplace Act doesn’t actually require workplace pee tests.  This from ”HRHero.com: Your Employment Law Resource” ( emphasis mine )…

..employers must certify that they will provide a drug-free workplace.  The law doesn’t require alcohol or drug testing, but testing is implicitly authorized as a means to maintain a drug-free workplace.

So what does it mean to provide a “drug-free workplace”? Certainly that must mean that even if they don’t have to drug-test, they couldn’t comply because Prop 19 would allow employees to possess marijuana, right? Wrong.

Employers whose companies fall under this category must have a policy prohibiting the unlawful manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of a controlled substance in the workplace and specifying what actions will be taken in the event of violations.

When Prop 19 passes, possession of marijuana, up to an ounce, is no longer unlawful.  There is no basis to claim a California company was allowing “unlawful possession”, so they could still maintain an “( illegal ) drug-free workplace” and therefore, give no reason for the federal government to pull any contracts or grants.

7.  Legalizing marijuana for healthy people will end medical marijuana for sick people!

Try to wrap your mind around the idea that allowing everyone to grow a 25 square foot garden means sick people will not get their medicine.  Then imagine that a court will decide that a public that voted for legal marijuana for healthy people really meant to end medical marijuana for sick people.  If you can manage that, you’ve entered the mind of J.  Craig Canada.

Canada’s analysis rests on this bit of Prop 19’s language:

Provide easier, safer access for patients who need cannabis for medical purposes.

The courts will determine that this means Prop.  19 is intended to amend and supersede California’s medical marijuana laws; Proposition 215 ( H&S 11362.5 ) and SB 420 ( H&S 11362.7-H&S 11362.9 ).

Then Canada goes on to criticize the next two paragraphs in the initiative, which provides cities the right to tax and regulate marijuana for adults, “except as permitted under Health and Safety Sections 11362.5 and 11362.7 through 11362.9.”

Got it? Canada says the first paragraph will supersede – that is, eliminate – California’s Prop 215, and then moves on to the next two paragraphs that specifically provide exceptions under Prop 215.  So I guess Prop 19 makes Prop 215 moot…  except when it doesn’t.

6.  Legalizing marijuana will never raise any money because the social costs would outweigh any fiscal benefits…  look at alcohol and tobacco!

Forget for a moment that in this country, we don’t determine people’s rights based on whether it makes a buck or not.  ( I mean, we shouldn’t.  ) It doesn’t matter whether legalizing marijuana will make a dime; it is simply wrong to lock up adults for smoking pot.  Proponents of Prop 19 have floated the idea that legalizing pot would raise tax revenues for the state and the opponents, like San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer, who is acting president of the California Police Chiefs Association, deny that advantage of the proposition by pointing out that alcohol and tobacco taxes bring in less than what alcohol and tobacco cause in health and safety costs

This is one of the instances where figures don’t lie, but liars figure.  Indeed, the taxes we collect from alcohol and tobacco don’t come close to covering the social costs from those substances.  Lung cancer, cirrhosis, emphysema, drunk driving, cigarette breaks, domestic violence, after a while the costs of smoking and drinking add up…  because smoking and drinking are toxic and addictive.

Marijuana is neither toxic nor addictive.  A Canadian study found that a tobacco smoker cost the country $800 per year, each drinker cost $165, and each toker cost $20, and half of that was laundry costs for Cheetos stains ( I kid! ).  Also, it is not as if nobody is smoking pot now and post Prop-19 we’ll be overrun with tokers.  People are smoking pot now and we’re taking in zero dollars in taxes and we’re spending a billion dollars in California failing to stop it.

5.  Big Tobacco will buy up great huge tracts of land in Northern California and mass produce lousy joints pumped full of toxic addictive chemicals!

This is one of the complaints by the people making money growing marijuana now, mostly in Northern California, who have long claimed that “Philip Morris is buying up 400 acres of land in Humboldt County in case legalization passes” and “RJ Reynolds already has the trademark on such names as ‘Acapulco Gold’, ‘Maui Wowie’, and ‘Panama Red’ for their joints once legalization passes”.

These urban legends have been around as long as there have been hippies.  Any in-depth search of news archives from Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity, and Del Norte counties in California will fail to find the great Philip Morris land buy – you can imagine that would make for an above-the-fold headline in a local “Emerald Triangle” newspaper.  Another search on the US Patent & Trademark Office finds all sorts of interesting trademarks for pot names, but none owned by a cigarette company.

But let’s suppose Big Tobacco wants to get into cannabis production.  Prop 19 gives individuals the right to grow their own marijuana and share it with friends.  This isn’t tobacco, where cigarette companies have a captive audience for an addictive substance with proven toxic results from repeated use.  If Big Tobacco makes a bunch of toxic schwaggy joints, who’s buying them? They’ll have to produce a product that’s a better deal than growing and rolling your own.

4.  Today’s pot is fourteen times more powerful than Sixties weed and will lead to more crack babies!

Credit Los Angeles Bishop Ron Allen for this bit of reefer madness.  “It’s going to cause crime to go up.  There will be more drug babies,” he warned the LA Times.  The New York Times reported on Allen describing marijuana as “the most sinister drug,” and asking that “the demonic spirits be cast back into hell.” The good Bishop should know, because he was a former crack addict and the first illegal drug he used was marijuana.

The logical problem with Bishop Allen’s gateway theory is that while nearly all crack addicts have smoked pot, very few pot smokers have ever smoked crack.  The only commonality between marijuana and crack is that they are both illegal drugs ( even then, marijuana is more illegal; it is in Schedule I while cocaine is in Schedule II ).  Marijuana doesn’t make people smoke crack any more than alcohol or tobacco makes people smoke crack, at least according to the US Institute of Medicine.

I’ve been following the US government’s Potency Monitoring Project for years ( yes, there is a federal agency using your tax dollars to prove just how diggity dank your chronic is ).  The most potent weed seizure I recall was 37.2% THC.  So if Bishop Allen was smoking weed that was 14x weaker than that, he was smoking 2.65% THC weed, or a grade somewhere between ditchweed and feral hemp at best! Since the average weed seizure tests at 8.52%, Bishop Allen was smoking the equivalent of a hemp t-shirt.

The Project has shown average potency to have doubled, which means nothing since THC is non-toxic, can’t cause overdose, and is self-titrating, which is a fancy way of saying you smoke til you get stoned then you stop, whether it’s one regular joint or one-quarter of a potent joint.

3.  People who smoke marijuana in the same apartment building as a child will be arrested! (Not that your landlord will let you grow pot anyway.)

There are some marijuana smokers who think that an ounce of cannabis and a 25 square foot garden just aren’t enough.  They’ve taken to sifting through the initiative for every possible flaw, misinterpretation, and slippery slope to muddy the conversation.  Take this 2am-stoned-to-the-gills contemplation of “space”.

..consuming cannabis would be illegal in the same “space” as a minor.  Police and judges are free to interpret the word “space” to mean the same room, house, or entire apartment complex.

Well, I suppose police and judges are free to interpret the word “space” to mean the Cosmos, and since there are children in the universe, the vote to legalize marijuana means nobody can smoke pot anywhere!

If that wasn’t enough to dissuade you, renters would have to (*gasp*) ask their landlord’s permission to grow marijuana! I can’t imagine why property owners would be apprehensive about that…

While growing your own supply is fun as hell, it can also be messy, dangerous, and can easily cause damage if done improperly.  (Not to mention homeowners insurance is likely to rise and homes containing cannabis could face seizure by the federal government.)

So, to sum up, you should vote no on being able to grow weed and hold an ounce, even if you own your own home, because some renters wouldn’t be able to grow ( but could still hold an ounce ) and you couldn’t smoke around kids.

2.  Legally home-grown marijuana will lead to outbreaks of toxic deadly molds!

It’s fascinating to me the little niches some prohibitionists stake out.  Canada’s Barbara Kay works the “pot causes schizophrenia” angle (it doesn’t).  Calvina Fay likes to put quotes around “medical” marijuana.  But for sheer 50’s sci-fi horror predictions about legalization, nobody can touch Alexandra Datig of NipItInTheBud2010.org and her dire warnings of toxic mold…

Aspergillus & Stachybotrys Next Health Nightmare If Marijuana Legalization Takes Place?

In 1996, there was a study of 10,000 cases of Aspergillosis with treatment costs of $633 Million.  That means on average, just to try and treat ( not cure ) the problem, each case accrued average costs of roughly $63,300.

If the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 passes, 1/3 of California will be at risk of serious BLACK MOLD CONTAMINATION as well as Aspergillus exposure.  And how will anyone be able to control the contamination when anyone can cultivate marijuana in their home or backyard at any time without supervision? …Well? …Anyone?

Aspergillus is a toxic mold and yes, it does grow on marijuana (if you’re a lousy grower).  It grows on carpets, trees, and drywall, too.  It killed 261 people in 2004 for a death rate of 0.88255 deaths per 1 million people.  You are more likely to die from appendicitis (371 deaths) than aspergillus.

Still, it might be scary until you realize that people are growing marijuana indoors now and because it is illegal, do it in ways that are more likely to cause an outbreak of mold.

1.  Workplaces would be overrun by workers smoking marijuana on the job!

We opened up with the California Chamber of Commerce, so it is only fitting we end with their most apocalyptic pronouncement to date:

Imagine a workplace where employees show up to work high on marijuana and there is nothing you can do about it.  That’s what employers can look forward to if Proposition 19 passes.

Employers would have to permit to employees to smoke marijuana at work.

Prop 19 does nothing of the sort.  It specifically retains “the existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected.” Nobody is going to be working blazed with no fear of being fired – California is an “at will” employment state, anyway.

The Chamber’s real fear – and they’re not even shy about saying so publicly – is that management won’t be able to discriminate against workers who might smoke pot off the job:

Employers would be prohibited from discriminating against marijuana users by taking marijuana use into account when deciding whether to hire an applicant.

When it comes to legal analysis, I prefer the non-partisan California Legislative Analysts Office take on Prop 19 and the workplace:

State and local law enforcement agencies could not seize or destroy marijuana from persons in compliance with the measure.  In addition, the measure states that no individual could be punished, fined, or discriminated against for engaging in any conduct permitted by the measure.  However, it does specify that employers would retain existing rights to address consumption of marijuana that impairs an employee’s job performance.

So that’s it – if you vote to legalize and tax pot in California, the state will lose all federal contracts, end medical marijuana, cost billions, create toxic addictive schwaggy joints, lead to crack babies, eliminate smoking in the Cosmos, overwhelm us with toxic mold, and fill the workplaces with blazed wastoids.

And they say smoking pot will make you crazy.  Seems like legalizing it makes some people crazier.

Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2010 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Russ Belville

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Used plastic + hemp = lumber

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

A UNC Charlotte researcher with a passion for sustainability is creating a new building material out of recycled plastic bottles and an ancient grass.

Dr. Na Lu, an assistant professor at UNCC’s Department of Engineering Technology, has created a material she believes may outperform composite lumber and wood lumber in many uses, and which has potential to be used in the residential and light commercial building industry.

In her lab at UNCC, Luna, as she prefers to be called, holds a dog bone-shaped sample of her creation: a beige plastic woven with threads of what looks like horsehair. “Hemp,” Luna says, and points to a fluffy pile of the fibers on the table.

Unlike much present-day composite lumber, Luna’s product substitutes hemp fibers for more typical chipped wood often mixed with virgin plastic. And unlike pressure-treated wood, the hemp material contains no toxic heavy metals.

Wood fiber is structured like a bundle of straws, she said, but hemp’s crystalline structure gives it greater mechanical strength. She demonstrates by holding out a handful of hemp fibers to pull.

“This (hemp composite) material performs up to 4,000 to 6,000 psi (pounds per square inch),” Luna said. “That’s as strong as medium-strength concrete.”

At the same time, the hemp-recycled plastic material is lighter than regular composite lumber, she said.

Hemp may be a promising building material, but the stuff Luna uses isn’t going to get anyone arrested. It’s industrial hemp, with an extremely low content of THC, the psychoactive substance for which marijuana is known.

Hemp is just one key to the new material; the other is recycled plastic bottles. In the United States, about 20 billion plastic bottles are used annually, and just 18 percent of those get recycled, Luna said. “The niche of what we do here is … we used HDPE recycled plastic, as opposed to resin epoxy,” she said.

Where things get wet

Unlike regular lumber, the experimental material is moisture- and insect-resistant, and hemp grows a lot faster than wood. Hemp fiber polymers are being used in the automotive industry in Europe for car interiors, Luna said, but she sees a future for the material in buildings, particularly in places where wood rot is a problem.

“The first application I really would like to see is any point where there is water contact in a civil application – a retaining wall, decking, bridges,” she said.

While it would cost more to produce the material today than it does to produce wood lumber, the life cycle cost would be cheaper and, over time, with a greater scale of production, she believes the cost to the consumer would fall.

For Luna, an interest in accomplishing conventional goals through unconventional means came early. Born in China, she said she saw firsthand the difficulty of a heavily populated nation struggling with high energy costs. After moving to the States, Luna earned her doctorate from Clemson University. In the process, she worked with a professor in Arizona in constructing a school from straw bales coated with cement.

Testing, testing

To prepare hemp composite samples for testing, Luna and her student assistant, John Larson, first extrude pellets of recycled plastic. Larson, a rising sophomore from Stanley majoring in construction management, treats the hemp fiber to remove its oil and odor. He points out a tensile testing machine used to pull the fibers and take pictures with a high-speed camera of how the material reacts and deforms in each moment.

Larson and Luna sandwich the strands between layers of plastic, and test the finished sample under a static load and a dynamic load (a moving load, such as that produced by wind or water) for changes in strength at various temperatures and humidity levels.

“We tried chopping them up,” Larson said of one of many experiments with the fibers. That didn’t prove strong enough, so now they’re turning out samples with longer hemp strands.

“It’s tedious,” Luna said of the yearlong process of trial and error. “But once you see the material improve … you love it.”

Listening to Mother Nature

In designing materials for building, it makes sense to take cues from nature, Luna said. “Mother Nature is much smarter than us,” she said. “I really respect nature and how things are designed.”

In the lab, Luna and Larson demonstrate the testing of a sample of the hemp composite. The “dog bone” slides into a vise-like apparatus on a strength-testing machine and, as Luna watches a glowing computer screen, the machine pulls the sample until at last it snaps, at 5,692 psi.

“Wow!” Luna says, surprised. Larson peers at the computer with her and they marvel at the test results, which were achieved at 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 35 percent humidity – variables, Luna says, which are important because a material’s performance changes with moisture and heat.

The next challenge will be making the material more fireproof. But already a lumber company and an architectural firm have expressed interest in it, Luna said.

In addition to exploring hemp and recycled plastic as a lumber substitute, Luna is looking at combining recycled plastic with bamboo fibers. She’s also working on a new class of thermoelectric materials to harvest waste heat energy and convert it into electrical energy without moving parts.

via Used plastic + hemp = lumber – CharlotteObserver.com.

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From the Family of Jack Herer: The Hemperor would Support Prop 19

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

From the Family of Jack Herer, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Van Nuys, California, August, 2010

Dear Friends of Hemp and Cannabis,

Our father, Jack Herer, was a man of leadership, compassion and idealism. He worked relentlessly for decades to achieve his dream of legalizing Cannabis hemp in all its forms, personal, medical and industrial. He wanted Cannabis to be free and open, and to be given full respect for its enormous economic, environmental and cultural benefits.

As an idealist, Jack was adverse to half measures. He originally opposed Prop 215 because it stopped at medical use only. He initially opposed Senate Bill 420 because it set limited quantities as a safe harbor. Over time, however, he came to appreciate the freedoms they created, and took pride in the role he played in inspiring those changes. Jack’s great fear about Prop 215 and SB 420 was that people would accept those limits, become complacent and stop working for full legalization. He feared we would be stuck with medical use forever.

Likewise, Jack railed against Tax Cannabis 2010, now Proposition 19, and its plan for limited legalization and local authority to tax and regulate marijuana sales to adults 21 and above. It falls far short of what he wanted. Jack ‘wanted it all,’ and Prop 19 is just a part of that dream. Unfortunately, Jack passed away before Prop 19 made the 2010 ballot; so many people think he would still oppose it. We don’t believe that, and we ask that everyone stop saying he would cling to that position as we move toward the Nov. 2 vote.

As his family, we want the world to know that the last thing Jack Herer would want is for Californians to vote to keep Cannabis illegal. He was smart and had the political savvy to know that once a measure is on the ballot, the time for bickering has passed. That is why he campaigned for Prop 215 despite its shortcomings. That is why, were he able, he would now be telling voters to rally around and Vote Yes on Prop 19.

Does that mean he would want everyone to stop and be happy with the modest changes that Prop 19 affords? Absolutely not! What Jack would want us to do right now is to support Prop 19, and come Nov. 3 he would be right back again, telling you to renew your commitment to bring a comprehensive California Hemp and Health Initiative to the voters in 2012 or some future date. Jack Herer would ask – no, he would demand your yes vote on Prop 19, along with a pledge to continue fighting for the plant, the people and the planet.

It is true that Prop 19 does not fulfill our father’s dream; but it takes us much closer to achieving it than we are now, and for that reason we, his family, endorse Prop 19 today.

Please vote yes on Prop 19 Nov 2, but do it with the dedication to keep working toward complete legalization in Jack’s honor.

Sincerely, Dan Herer et al.

via From the Family of Jack Herer: The Hemperor would Support Prop 19 | NORML Blog, Marijuana Law Reform.

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Has the time come to legalize drugs?

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER, Miami Herald

Legalization of drugs — long an issue championed mainly by fringe groups — is rapidly moving to the mainstream in Latin America.

Last week’s surprise statement by former Mexican President Vicente Fox in support of “legalizing production, sales and distribution” of drugs made big headlines around the world.

Fox, a former close U.S. ally who belongs to the same center-right political party as President Felipe Calderón, rocked the boat at home by indirectly criticizing the very premise of Calderon’s all-out military offensive against Mexico’s drug cartels, which has cost 28,000 lives since 2006.

Calderon immediately responded that he opposes legalization of drugs, although he has opened a dialogue with political parties about the future of his country’s anti-drug policies. The left-of-center Party of the Democratic Revolution announced that it supports “de facto legalization” of drugs.

Fox’s statement, first published Saturday in his blog, went far beyond a 2009 joint declaration by former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia. In that statement, the three former leaders questioned the effectiveness of the U.S. war on drugs and proposed de-criminalizing possession of marijuana for personal use.

While the three centrist former presidents’ proposal amounted to not prosecuting people for consuming marijuana, Fox’s proposal calls for legalization of all major drugs — the whole enchilada.

In an extended interview, Fox told me that he is making his proposal because drug-related violence in Mexico has reached intolerable levels, and because the experience of other countries such as the Netherlands has shown that allowing drug sales has not significantly driven up drug consumption.

“Prohibitionist policies have hardly worked anywhere,” Fox told me. “Prohibition of alcohol in the United States [in the 1920's] never worked, and it only helped trigger violence and crime.”

Since possession of small amounts of marijuana has already been decriminalized in Mexico, what’s needed now are bolder steps, such as legalizing drug production and using the taxes it generates to fund anti-drug education programs, he said.

“What I’m proposing is that, instead of allowing this business to continue being run by criminals, by cartels, that it be run by law-abiding business people who are registered with the Finance Ministry, pay taxes and create jobs,” Fox said.

Fox called for a reversal of Calderón’s decision to send the army into the streets to fight the drug cartels because “the army is not prepared to do police work, and we are seeing day to day how the army’s image is losing ground in Mexico” as a result of this war.

Why didn’t you come out with this proposal when you were president? I asked.

Fox responded that legalization was often discussed in Cabinet meetings during his presidency, but that the urgency of such a measure has increased since “because of the extraordinary cost we are paying in a drop in tourism, a drop in investments and a lack of attention to education and health.”

In a separate interview, White House drug czar R. Gil Kerlikowske told me that drug legalization is a “non-starter” in the Obama administration.

Kerlikowske disputed the idea that alcohol prohibition drove up crime in the United States in the 1920s, arguing that there were no reliable crime statistics at the time.

And he rejected the notion that there has been no major increase in drug consumption in the Netherlands.

“In the Netherlands, consumption did go up. In fact, the Netherlands has been in the process of closing down hundreds of the marijuana cafes that had been in existence because of the problems that are occurring,” he said.

My opinion: I’m not convinced that a blanket legalization of drugs would work because government regulation of the cocaine and heroin businesses in countries that already have high corruption rates would result in greater official corruption.

On the other hand, it’s clear that after four years of Calderón’s U.S.-backed war on drugs, the cartels are smuggling more drugs, killing more people and becoming richer.

Perhaps the time has come to take a step-by-step approach and start a serious debate about passing laws that would regulate legal production of marijuana, alongside massive education campaigns to discourage people from using it.

Then, we could see who is right and consider what to do next.

via Has the time come to legalize drugs? – Andres Oppenheimer – MiamiHerald.com.

  • Kerlikowske disputed the idea that alcohol prohibition drove up crime in the United States in the 1920s, arguing that there were no reliable crime statistics at the time.

I think the drug czar is being disingenuous, or just flat-out lying when he says this. A quick search on Google led me to a few resources for him, all of which point to increased crime during Prohibition:

  1. Organized Crime and Prohibition at albany.edu
  2. Prohibition at the Digital History Project at the University of Houston
  3. Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure by Mark Thornton, CATO Institute
  4. This chart shows that there were steep increases in both homicides and prisoners in custody during Prohibition.
  5. Homicide Rate and Receipt of Prisoners 1910-1987 shows the number of people sent to prisons also rose during Prohibition.
  6. The following charts show elements of increased crime that were the direct result of alcohol prohibition:
  7. And there’s a lot more where that came from.

Frankly, I think if Kerlikowske doesn’t already know about all of that, then he shouldn’t be in the position of drug czar in the Obama Administration. So which is it, incompetence or lying?

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Free Marc Emery, Political Prisoner in the U.S.

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Áine MacDermot

The FREE MARC campaign wants the Canadian government to repatriate Marc Emery from the US federal prison system so he can serve his sentence in his home country of Canada. Marc Emery is a political prisoner, imprisoned for activism and funding the marijuana movement through marijuana seed sales.

via FreeMarc.ca | Free Marc.

Read Marc’s prison blog here.

Did You Know?

  1. In the year case R. v. Hunter in the year 2000, the BC Court of Appeals found that a $200 fine, not jail time, is the appropriate punishment for selling seeds. Read that decision here.
  2. On March 7th, 2008, the BC Appeals Court released a decision that the punishment for selling cannabis seeds should not be more severe than one month in prison and one year of probation, the punishment handed to a marijuana seed retailer in BC who was selling to Americans. Read that story here.

Here are 10 facts you should know about Marc Emery:

  1. Marc Emery is a Canadian citizen who never went to the USA as a seed seller. He operated his seed business in Canada at all times, with no American branches or employees.
  2. Marc Emery declared his income from marijuana seed sales on his income tax, and paid over $580,000 to the Federal and Provincial governments from 1999 to 2005.
  3. Marc Emery is the leader of the British Columbia Marijuana Party, a registered political party that has regularly participated in elections.
  4. Marc Emery has never been arrested or convicted of manufacturing or distributing marijuana in Canada, as he only sold seeds.
  5. Marc Emery gave away all of the profits from his seed business to drug law reform lobbyists, political parties, global protests and rallies, court litigation, medical marijuana initiatives, drug rehabilitation clinics, and other legitimate legal activities and organizations.
  6. Marc Emery helped found the United States Marijuana Party, state-level political parties, and international political parties in countries such as Israel and New Zealand.
  7. Marc Emery has been known as a book seller and activist in Canada for 30 years, fighting against censorship laws and other social issues long before he became a drug law reform activist.
  8. Marc Emery has been a media figure for 20 years with regards to marijuana and drug law reform. He is very well-known to Canadian, American and international news media organizations.
  9. Marc Emery operated his business in full transparency and honesty since its inception in 1994, even sending his marijuana seed catalogue inside his magazine “Cannabis Culture” to each Member of Parliament in Canada every two months for years.
  10. The US Drug Enforcement Administration admitted in a press release from Administrator Karen Tandy that his July 29th, 2005 arrest was based on drug legalization efforts — a copy of the document can be viewed here.
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