Emery a political prisoner? Sorry, I don't buy that. (en francais)

Pot activist is scared his fiancee says

The arrests raise the question of how far another country should be allowed to go in trying to influence the way in which Canadian police deal with a substance that many Canadians consider to be an acceptable recreational tool.

"If Mr. Emery was a person who had been suspected of homicide in the U.S., we wouldn't have any problem with what was done at all," said Neil Boyd, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.

He said Mr. Emery has been able to operate his marijuana seed business for more than a decade in Canada, where pot possession has traditionally not been vigorously policed as a criminal act.

"For us to send Mr. Emery to the U.S. to face what might be life imprisonment would seem to me to be ceding a certain amount of our sovereignty in terms of how we want to see Canadian citizens treated for certain kinds of behaviour."

When Mr. Emery made the conscious choice to begin exporting to the US, he accepted the risks that went with that choice. The fact that his business has operated for "more than a decade in Canada" is no defence of his actions. Had he only been selling his products in Canada he would not be in the situation he is today.

Personally, I think we should legalize all drugs and tax the hell out of them. Let people make the choice and live with the consequences.

Mr. Emery made a choice to continue his advocacy through exports to the United States. Now it's time to face the consequences of that choice.

This story was crossposted to Colbert's Comment's Friday Open Trackback Party