My letter in the National Post

The National Post in Canada ran two letters in support of Marc Emery today. One from me and one from Marc's wife Jodie.

While I agree with most of Chris Selley’s column, I take exception to his assertion: “However asinine, the law’s the law.”
I live in Alabama, where it used to be legal to own a slave and illegal to help a slave gain freedom. We also had Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks and poor whites from taking part in the political process. None of those laws were just and, everyone who had the courage to break them were true heroes, as is [marijuana activist] Marc Emery.
Just because something is against the law doesn’t mean it’s bad and just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s good, as former Alabama laws so clearly demonstrate.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Marc Emery clearly has the moral high ground on this issue.

Loretta Nall, Alexander City, Ala.

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My Husband Shouldn't Be in A US Jail
Re: A Notable Defector In The War On Pot, Sept. 10.
Chris Selley claims my husband Marc Emery sold seeds to Americans for profit, but Marc was never selling seeds for personal gain. His purpose was to finance drug policy reform, and he was tremendously successful at it. The Drug Enforcement Administration made clear that they targeted Marc as “the founder of a marijuana legalization group” due to his money being “channelled to marijuana legalization groups active in the U.S. and Canada” and his arrest was “a significant blow to the marijuana legalization movement.”
There are seed sellers in Canada, Europe and even the United States who are not arrested and certainly don’t get five years in U.S. federal prison. Marc never set foot in the States and he paid income tax to Revenue Canada as a “marijuana seed vendor.” Marc should not have been extradited to a foreign country and the excessive, unjust punishment in the U.S. federal prison system he will endure — he should have been dealt with in his home country, where the activities took place.
Marc needs to be brought home to serve his time here in Canada.

Jodie Emery, Vancouver.