Pot crusaders nabbed at airport before police raid their shops
Stores and homes in Ontario, Vancouver hit in ‘Project Gator’
Prominent pot crusaders Marc and Jodie Emery will appear in a Toronto court for a bail hearing Friday after police raided the couple’s seven marijuana dispensaries in Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton.
The Emerys, purportedly en route to a cannabis expo in Spain, were arrested at Pearson airport Wednesday evening and charged with several drugrelated offences, including trafficking and possession for that purpose. They made a brief court appearance Thursday.
“Marc, of course, plans to fight as hard as he can and as he always has for the true legalization of cannabis and the end of all arrests in Canada, as does Jodie,” B.C. lawyer Kirk Tousaw said in a TV interview from Vancouver.
Three others were also charged as part of the Toronto police-led pot offensive called Project Gator.
The Emerys’ arrest came hours before police raided five Cannabis Culture locations in Toronto, one each in Vancouver and Hamilton, as well as private residences in Toronto, Stoney Creek and Vancouver.
At the busy Cannabis Culture location on Church St. in Toronto, staff and supporters gathered outside, shouting at police through the windows and livestreaming the 11 a.m. raid from their cellphones.
Manager Mark Harrison said police took all of the store’s inventory, cash as well as employee cellphones. At the time, there were eight employees in the store and about two dozen customers, he said.
Employees received verbal warnings but were not charged nor ticketed.
The number of pot dispensaries exploded across Toronto last year after the federal government promised to make good on its election promise to legalize marijuana.
Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott said Thursday the government remains committed to introducing legislation this spring, though it will still be subject to a rigorous parliamentary and regulatory process.
In the meantime, authorities, including Toronto city officials, insist only Health Canada approved patients are legally allowed to buy pot from federally regulated distributors via mail or courier.
After a series of high-profile raids and mass arrests last year in Toronto, the city appears to be ramping up its enforcement efforts again. On Wednesday, city lawyers filed an application in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to try and shut down another chain of dispensaries operating as Canna Clinics.
The city is seeking an injunction to restrain the corporate operators, related companies, directors, officers and others, from using locations throughout the city “to sell, store or distribute marijuana and restraining the carrying on of any other nonpermitted use.”
The application, which names the property owners, says the pot dispensaries are not “a permitted use” on the identified properties or on any city property.
“These operations are illegal under federal law and also operate in contravention of the city’s zoning bylaws,” said a statement from Tracey Cook, executive director of the city’s licensing and standards division.
Toronto lawyer and cannabis advocate Paul Lewin said Thursday police have previously raided some of the clinics, but charges were dropped after employees signed peace bonds.
He was dismayed the city is taking this step.
“It’s a terrible idea for so many reasons . . . we’re using legal resources to try to shut down dispensaries when it’s going to be legal soon,” he said.
He predicted the application will ultimately fail because of the legal grey area surrounding marijuana laws.
Lewin also suggested the Cana Clinics will remain defiant and stay open.
The Emerys’ Toronto lawyer, Jack Lloyd, said he expects the couple will be granted bail and released.
They are no strangers to the court system.
In 2014, Marc Emery, 59, was released from U.S. prison after serving a four-and-a-half year sentence for selling marijuana seeds to American customers from his Vancouverbased dispensary. In December, he was arrested at a Cannabis Culture dispensary in Montreal and charged with drug trafficking.
Jodie Emery, 32, was first arrested in Montreal last December — along with Marc and eight other people— the day after Cannabis Culture officially opened six new dispensaries in the city. With files from Jesse Winter, Evelyn Kwong, Laura Beeston, Brennan Doherty and The Canadian Press