A Montreal court handed down its sentence to longtime cannabis activist Marc Emery on Wednesday, issuing him a $5,000 fine for drug trafficking. Considering both of the other more-serious charges against Emery, drug possession and conspiracy, were both dropped, the fine amounts to a slap on the wrist for the oft-jailed activist. Canada’s imminent legalization of adult-use cannabis played a role in Emery’s light sentencing, according to prosecutors.
Cannabis Activist Marc Emery Calls Canada’s Legalization Plans “A Disaster”
“Cannabis will be legalized eventually, so [that] has an impact on the sentence,” Crown prosecutor Philippe Vallières-Roland told reporters. And indeed, for Emery — the cannabis crusader who has spent much of the last decade in and out of prison in the US and Canada — $5,000 is easily the smallest penalty the activist has had to pay for his freedom.
Still, on his way out of a Montreal courthouse on Wednesday, Emery hardly had a kind word for the provincial government.
“[Montreal] is a corrupt province, and the people are an afterthought,” Emery told reporters. “There is no freedom in Quebec.”
Emery’s remarks stem from the activist’s strongly libertarian ideology: he feels the Canadian government should have as little say as possible over the country’s changing cannabis laws. After more than ten years campaigning for legalization, Emery now says the government’s current framework “will be a disaster” when it takes effect late this summer.
Emery takes issue with the way Canada’s new marijuana laws will give individual provinces almost complete control over the sale and consumption of cannabis. In Quebec, for example, government-run dispensaries will be the only game in town.
“There is not good access to cannabis at a reasonable price. So the new government program here will be