Court date for ‘Prince of Pot’ pushed back to end of May
The case brought against Marc Emery, the man who opened a series of cannabis dispensaries in Montreal while the federal government was taking its first steps toward legalizing the drug, has been pushed back to next month.
According to court records, the trial of Marc Emery, 60, the man who has dubbed himself the Prince of Pot, was scheduled to begin at the Montreal courthouse on Monday. But following a brief hearing, the case was carried over to May 30.
In December 2016, Emery opened six cannabis dispensaries in Montreal, including one on Mount Royal Ave., through his company Cannabis Culture. The intention was to sell cannabis for recreational use even though that was, and currently still is, considered illegal. Emery opened the shops shortly after the Liberal government appointed a task force to study how it would follow through on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election promise to legalize recreational cannabis. Shortly after the dispensaries were opened, the Montreal police carried out a series of raids on Dec. 16, 2016. The police arrested Emery and nine other people and told reporters they seized 18 kilograms of cannabis.
Since then, the Liberal government has tabled the Cannabis Act and its proposed legislation is before the Senate. Companies like the Société des alcools du Québec and Second Cup are looking at selling cannabis once it is made legal in Canada. But while cannabis appears to be on a path toward legalization, Emery continues to face serious legal problems for having opened dispensaries in other parts of Canada. On Dec. 18, Emery and his wife, Jodie Emery, pleaded guilty at a courthouse in Toronto to possessing cannabis with intent to traffic and were each fined $150,000 and given two years of probation. The case involved a dispensary the Emerys opened in downtown Toronto. After he was sentenced, Emery told reporters: “I was giving it (cannabis) away all the time. Huge amounts of money, it was fun.”
In November, Emery had told a committee of the Ontario legislature that the shop in Toronto was “the busiest marijuana shop in the world.”
On Jan. 19, a judge in Vancouver ordered the termination of the lease of a shop that Jodie Emery had been renting for several months. The judge ruled the lease could be terminated, even though the landlord previously knew what was being sold at the dispensary, because: “Each day it is open for business, the tenants are not only breaching the law and operating without a valid business licence, they are also breaching the lease made between these parties.”
Six people who were charged along with Emery in the Montreal case have since pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with the intention to traffic and all six were granted unconditional discharges as a sentence. Chris Feldman, 30, of Montreal, pleaded guilty that same day and was fined $400.
Jamey Guitard, 29, of Lachine, pleaded guilty to the same charge in October. His sentence of two years of probation involves a conditional discharge, which means he will be left with no criminal record if he follows the conditions of the probation. However, in an unrelated case, Guitard recently pleaded guilty to arson with disregard for human life. On March 17, 2017, he used a Molotov cocktail to firebomb the Boustan restaurant on Sherbrooke St. W., near Grand Blvd., in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. He has a sentence hearing in the arson case scheduled for next month.
The only other person who has charges still pending in the same case brought against Emery, Maria Grazia Cilla, 47, of Montreal, has a hearing scheduled at the Montreal courthouse later this week.