Let me get a little further into this Marc Emery debate and at yet another ridiculous analogy. The day I was leaving for my honeymoon my wife and I dashed off to the mall to get a hat to protect me from the hot Sahara Sun. On the way a got a speeding ticket. Some of my friends asked if I tried to use the honeymoon thing to get out of the ticket. My response was that I speed every time I am in my car (maginally but I almost never drive the speed limit) so I beat the system about 99.9% of the time. If I have to pay a speeding ticket every 5-10 years then so be it. It is part of the game. I know the rules. I ignore them at my own risk. This is how I feel about Marc Emery. I will let the National Post expand.
...While selling or even possessing marijuana remains illegal in Canada (pending legislation that stands to decriminalize possession of small amounts for personal use), we treat the substance far less seriously than do our neighbours. So if Mr. Emery had limited his business to Canada, he likely could have escaped prosecution, or at least avoided any serious jail time. (Of his 11 previous convictions for marijauana-related offences, only last year's in Saskatchewan saw him imprisoned.) But by knowingly selling pot seeds in the United States, which everyone knows takes such matters far more seriously, Mr. Emery left himself vulnerable to grave consequences. Despite what his supporters claim, the U.S. is not attempting to punish him for what he does in Canada; it's aiming to crack down on what it considers to be drug dealing on its own turf.
I guess those millions of dollars in exports in an illegal substance was too much to ignore for poor Mr. Emery. As the saying goes, you do the crime, you pay the time.
