FIGHTING WORDS
Pot activist says she’s ‘more fired up than ever’ after being ordered to sever ties from the business that she and her husband started
Canada’s “Princess of Pot” flew home to Vancouver Monday to cut ties with the cannabis empire she and her husband spent decades growing.
Jodie Emery returned to her Chinatown apartment for the first time since being released from custody earlier this month in Toronto, where she, her husband Marc Emery, and three other associates in the Cannabis Culture business were arrested and charged with a range of offences including drug trafficking.
“I am so grateful to be back where the nature and the forest and the mountains can soothe my soul, after that concrete jungle,” she said Monday in her first interview since returning to Vancouver.
After two nights in custody, the Emerys were released on bail subject to conditions including a prohibition on “any business dealings with Cannabis Culture locations.” Emery has until Friday, she said, to remove herself from Cannabis Culture, a brand her husband started in the 1990s and she has helped develop since 2004.
“To be stripped of everything I have and everything I’ve done is degrading and upsetting,” she said, adding the end of her recent foray into running a franchise business means she can return to being “a broke activist” once again.
“I will fight this, I will not stop being an activist. You know, I was too busy with work to be an activist, and now, well, take away the business, and you’ve made a monster out of me,” she said with a laugh.
“There are many other people supplying cannabis in much larger amounts. But for us, everybody knows, it’s a very political persecution,” she said. “I’m more fired up than ever.”
Emery’s tidy, modest one-bedroom rental apartment is unremarkable, except perhaps for the seven-page document fixed to the fridge door with masking tape, titled “Warrant to search pursuant to Section 11 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act”. When she learned police were raiding her apartment earlier this month, looking through her bedside table and digging up her potted orchids, Emery said her first thought was about her “scaredy cat” 14-year-old grey tabby, Max.
Emery will spend this week removing her name from bank accounts, ending her directorship of the company, and planning for the handover of Cannabis Culture’s day-today operation to longtime employees, she said. She has been a director of Cannabis Culture since Marc removed himself from the company in advance of his 2010 extradition to the U.S. to serve a four-year jail sentence in connection with his mail-order cannabis seed business.
Cannabis Culture, probably one of the world’s best-known weed brands, has grown from a head shop and magazine, to encompass a political party office, a vapour lounge, and, only in the last year, storefront cannabis dispensaries.
Cannabis Culture’s expansion into retail pot sales began with the opening last April of a Vancouver store, followed a month later by a Toronto location. The dates of the Emery’s alleged trafficking offences began the day the Toronto dispensary opened, last May 27, court documents show. In the last 11 months, more than a dozen Cannabis Culture dispensary franchises opened in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec.
Storefront marijuana sales remain illegal, despite the proliferation of dispensaries across Canada over the last two years, and some municipalities, led by Vancouver, moving to license them. Marijuana use is illegal under federal law in Canada, except for Health Canada-registered patients ordering by mail from the country’s 40 licensed producers.
And now, for the first time ever, the Emerys expect to soon be authorized medical marijuana patients.
Another condition of their release is not to consume unlawful substances, including cannabis, except “with a valid prescription.” Emery said she had a doctor’s visit last week, via Skype, to obtain a prescription for medical marijuana for anxiety. She hopes to have her medical card this week, and to place an order next week. In the meantime, she has tried to keep relaxed with an occasional glass of red wine.
While the Emerys await their next court appearance in Toronto — scheduled for April 21, coincidentally a day after the international 4/20 cannabis celebrations — neither is allowed to leave Canada. Marc must remain in Ontario, and Jodie is allowed to leave Ontario only for scheduled, police-approved visits to B.C.