Prince of Pot Plea Deal
The Prince and his Fattie
The Prince of Pot, indicted by a Seattle federal grand jury, has agreed to a five-year prison deal that will allow him to serve his time in a Canadian prison, he announced Monday. Marc Emery faced arrest if he entered the U.S. even though he was campaigning for GOP and anti-drug candidate Ron Paul (who he still faintly hopes will be elected and commute his sentence). He was accused of being a major U.S. pot distributor for his seeds-by-mail business from Vancouver. Reports Reuters:
Emery...was willing to fight the charges on principal, but said the deal is designed to help two co-accused avoid lengthy sentences in a U.S. prison and to keep him closer to family and friends. U.S. officials say Emery illegally sold millions of dollars of marijuana seeds from his business in Vancouver, but he and supporters said his activities were well known and tolerated by Canadian officials, including the federal Health Department. "My complaint is that there is no victim. Nobody who can say I hurt them, yet there are thousands of people who I can point to and say I helped," said Emery, who paid taxes on his earnings and gave money to charities and political causes.
In August, he told Seattle Weekly: "I sold millions of seeds, and sometimes made $2 million a year." But he blew much of it helping friends and causes, and is comparably broke today.
In a 60 Minutes profile of the Prince in 2006, then-U.S. Attorney John McKay called Emery "the biggest purveyor of marijuana from Canada into the United States." The DEA claimed his dope seeding resulted in 100,000 pounds of marijuana grown annually in the U.S. Over 11 years, that comes to 1.1 million pounds of dope, resulting in perhaps $2.5 billion worth of plants. "If it's true," Emery told us, "I'm proud to have brought such wealth to our [drug] community."
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