Marijuana Activist, Marc Emery, to Run in Upcoming Elections

July 31, 2008 | In Politics |

B.C. Marijuana Party activist, Marc Emery, declared his candidacy for Mayor of Vancouver yesterday, as well as his intent to run in an upcoming provincial by-election in the city.

Often referred to as the “Prince of Pot,” Emery has frequently made headlines since 2005, when his mail-order marijuana seed business was raided and shut down by Vancouver police, at the request of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – apparently, many of Emery’s customers were Americans.

Emery remains locked in a hard-fought battle to avoid extradition to the U.S., where he faces the possibility of lifelong imprisonment. If his seed business had operated exclusively within Canada, his sentence here probably wouldn’t have exceeded a month.

It’s easy enough to dismiss a man like Emery as a childish shit disturber, who barely deserves our pity, let alone our votes. But looking at his history, I can say at least one thing for Mr. Emery – he bases his ideas on solid principles which do deserve, at the very least, our consideration. He has involved himself in libertarian political activism for decades (running for office as far back as 1980), espousing a consistent and intelligent message of enhanced personal and economic freedom.

In 1984, Emery even went so far as co-founding a political party, the Freedom Party of Ontario, alongside Robert Metz, host of the London, Ontario-based radio program, Just Right, and in my opinion, one of the most sensible voices in Canadian politics.

Whether or not you agree with Emery’s pot-smoking lifestyle, I think it’s pretty clear that he isn’t motivated purely by the desire to “get high” or generate a profit (the earnings from his seed business were donated to various political advocacy groups, after all). Emery has dedicated the last several years of his life to a risky campaign of civil disobedience in an effort to do away with a law that he (and apparently most Canadians, myself included) feel is unjust. In the spirit of liberty, I have to respect him for that.

But would Marc Emery make a good Mayor of Vancouver (or provincial MLA)?

His proposed policies are soundly fiscally conservative – he advocates phasing out the provincial income tax, implementing massive spending cuts, and making up for any shortfall with a single tax on consumption. Locally, he wants to keep residential property taxes as low as possible, while reigning in spending by the Vancouver police, whose staffing levels have increased a whopping 18.6% since 2005.

In the spirit of civil liberties, Emery hopes to end Taser use in B.C., ban warrantless property searches, and of course, legalize marijuana (which would contribute to provincial consumption tax revenues in much the same way as alcohol and tobacco sales).

One area where I strongly disagree with Emery (and fear that he has taken a statist turn) is his advocacy of “safe injection sites,” particularly his proposal that the government “start free distribution … of heroin or oxycontin to addicts.” Although I tend to oppose laws targeting simple possession of controlled substances (I may elaborate on this in a later post), I feel that people who make stupid decisions with regard to substance abuse should have to put up with the consequences of their behaviour.

Although well intentioned, most “harm reduction” strategies serve to further reduce the personal responsibility of addicts, and prevent them from hitting “rock bottom,” which in many cases, is the only turning point. Sadly, addiction is a social problem that will always be with us, and one which most addicts (including those who undergo “treatment”) never permanently recover from. I am convinced that government action which shields addicts from the natural consequences of their behaviour ultimately does more harm than good.

Despite his flaws, Emery will at the very least be an entertaining presence in the upcoming elections. He’s unlikely to win either race, but with plenty of built-in publicity and a dedicated fan base of west coast weed smokers (assuming he can actually mobilize them ), he could at the very least tip the races away from less principled left-leaning candidates.