The Princess of Pot

[Blue_Tires]

The Princess of Pot
With her husband Marc in jail, Jodie Emery, a Green Party candidate in the next federal election, will inherit his cannabis empire


During the months while he awaited news of his extradition to the United States, parades of well-wishers regularly marched through Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters in Vancouver. They wound their way to the modest office at the rear of the Hastings Street store, in search of the infamous crusader for the legalization of marijuana. Marc greeted them all, and offered most a trophy: a photo of themselves doing a bong hit with the Prince of Pot. He would produce an oosik-sized instrument, pack it with potent BC bud, and orchestrate the snapshot with a practised patter: inhale, smile, shoot!

Exhale. And then Marc’s fans would stagger away, all grins and giggles, to spend the next twenty minutes wandering about the store. Marc would grin, too, as he watched his blissfully dazed guests queue up to purchase Free Marc T-shirts and other pothead tchotchkes. On the day I visited his Gastown emporium, he put away the oosik, tossed off that ironic smile that has become his trademark, and deadpanned, “I do twenty to fifty of those a day.”

Jodie, the lithe twenty-five-year-old working at the next desk, smiled but did not look up from her computer, where she was emailing organizers of the international Free Marc effort. In addition to campaigning for his release and managing his businesses, Jodie is Marc’s wife.

“Marc has always done things differently. He’s always had a unique type of success,” she says of her husband, who has been honing the smoky art of blending business with activism since 1975, when he dropped out of high school to buy a used bookstore in London, Ontario. Thirty years later, he was mak-ing millions of dollars selling marijuana seeds via mail order. “I’ve learned how he does it, by watching, by observing. And I’ve added to it what I think I know how to do well. I think I appeal to ordinary people.”

Jodie started working for Marc six years ago. A sultry nineteen-year-old with a passion for pearl necklaces and high heels, she stood out among the usual female admirers who fleshed out his following and frequented his bed. She was, and still is, like a Mad Men character who has wandered into an episode of Weeds. Marc, who describes himself as “a serial monogamist who’s never been monogamous,” was smitten. He anointed Jodie his protege, and romance soon bloomed.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.05--the-princess-of-pot/

[Oregone]

1. Heh, Ayn Rand fan running as a Green

Ya think you heard of everything. :)