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Activist Marc Emery lights up a large marijuana cigarette in front of London Ontario Police headquarters on Aug. 26, 2003. Police raided a business run by the head of the B.C. Marijuana party on Friday based on a search warrant requested by the U.S. government, which wants Marc Emery extradited to face charges related to the sale of marijuana seeds on the Internet and by mail. Photo: CP

ROD MICKLEBURGH, The Globe and Mail (Canada), reports:

Vancouver — Marc Emery, Canada’s most prominent pro-marijuana activist, is facing the possibility of life imprisonment in the United States for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to U.S. customers.

In a stunning development, RCMP officers arrested the self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot” in Halifax yesterday after a U.S. federal grand jury indicted him on charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

The charges stem from Mr. Emery’s lucrative sale of marijuana seeds, an activity he has carried on from his Vancouver base with minimal legal penalty for 10 years.

“I’ve sold about four million seeds,” the marijuana mogul boasted in a 2002 media interview. “Unlike most other seed dealers, I use my real name and I’m easy to find.”

U.S. drug-enforcement officials said they will seek Mr. Emery’s extradition from Canada to stand trial in Seattle, where conviction on either of the marijuana charges carries a minimum prison term of 10 years to a maximum of life.

Special Agent Rodney Benson of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said Mr. Emery, 47, has distributed millions of cannabis seeds to U.S. customers over the years, earning as much as $3-million annually.

“I am pleased to announce that he is out of business as of today,” Mr. Benson told a Seattle news conference. “His overblown arrogance and abuse of the rule of law will no longer be on display. Like other drugs, marijuana harms the innocents.”

By mid-afternoon, an attempt to access Mr. Emery’s business on the Internet produced a message, in large red letters: “Emery Seeds has been raided by the DEA and is shut down.”

The arrest of Mr. Emery, also head of the B.C. Marijuana Party, was accompanied by a simultaneous Vancouver Police raid of party headquarters on the edge of the city’s drug-ravaged Downtown Eastside.

Police were acting on a search warrant signed by Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm of the B.C. Supreme Court, who agreed there were reasonable grounds to believe that the three conspiracy charges “over which the United States of America has jurisdiction have been committed.”

Mr. Emery’s supporters, four of whom were carted away for lying down in front of a police van, were outraged by the day’s events.

Puffing openly on marijuana, they pounded drums, chanted at passing motorists and brandished signs damning the DEA for intruding into Canada.

“I was completely shocked,” said well-known pot activist David Malmo-Levine, who took his fight against Canada’s marijuana laws to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“It’s appalling for the U.S. to come in here and try to police our country. To arrest Canadians to face their penalties and their laws is completely wrong,” he said, standing in front of an upside down U.S. flag with the words “DEA Go Away” on it.

Two other marijuana activists were also arrested in Vancouver on the same charges as Mr. Emery, at the request of U.S. authorities yesterday — Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, 34, and Gregory Williams, 50.

Television footage showed an undercover officer wearing a balaclava bundling Mr. Williams into a police vehicle.

The extradition hearing is certain to highlight a clash between the Draconian drug laws of the United States and Canada’s more benign approach to marijuana use.

Only last week, the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected a two-year jail term for a convicted marijuana grower as excessive, while Ottawa is moving to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot.

Assistant U.S. attorney Jeff Sullivan said there is no chance of marijuana being legalized in the United States. “Marijuana is not a benign drug. There are more kids in treatment for addiction to marijuana than for all other illegal drugs combined,” Mr. Sullivan claimed.

Last year, Mr. Emery spent two months in a Saskatoon jail for passing a joint around at a pro-pot rally, the only time he has been sent to prison for any of his 11 marijuana-related convictions in Canada.

U.S. officials praised the “outstanding co-operation” of Canadian law-enforcement agencies in their 18-month investigation of Mr. Emery’s seed business, 75 per cent of which they said was aimed at Americans.

© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.