U.S. suspends war on drugs for Hempfest

Motley children in strollers, exuberant young adults in face paint and costume, grateful deadheads in tie-dye, aging hippies in sarongs, the city's finest in uniform -- more than 150,00 people, media estimated, cavorted Saturday and Sunday in Myrtle Edwards Park.

Three stages featured everything from country ditties, electric rock to acappela funk.

Dozens of vendors sold elaborate pipes, humongous bongs, multi-coloured crystals, posters, T-shirts, paraphernalia, art and assorted handicrafts.

Information kiosks were manned by organizations as diverse as the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, industrial hemp producers and Gramma's for Ganja -- all pushing to Free the Weed.

Food stalls offered a spectacular global menu of pizza, gyros, curry, fruit, organic smoothies, ice cream, daiquiris, mini-doughnuts....

Of course, sales folk peddled pot-laced cookies and brownies and the telltale perfume of burning illicit cannabis wafted over the throng, most festooned in leis made of faux marijuana leaves.

Once ignored as a bit of an embarrassment to the local burghers (it was started in 1991 to oppose the first Gulf War), the festival now is embraced -- a $200,000 Cdn event that generates a small frenzy of stoner capitalism.

Even former police chief Norm Stamper is a big fan of its time-for-a-change message and endorses it: "I think the scope and magnitude of the damage that's been done by the war on drugs far exceeds the damage of any other crime-fighting public policy in the history of the country."

The recent arrest and extradition request of Canadian Marc Emery was also much discussed at this year's gathering.

One of the key lawyers on the Emery defence team, John Conroy, told the crowd the case would be an uphill battle.

He predicted it will turn on whether Canadian courts accepted the contention the prosecution was an attempt to stifle free speech and suppress the movement to legalize marijuana.

"It was all done for a political purpose," Conroy said. "It's a political prosecution. Other seed sellers are not being prosecuted in Canada or the U.S. This really is an attempt to get the Johnny Appleseed of pot."

Still, under the Extradition Act, Conroy thought it almost a foregone conclusion that the three accused would be ordered handed over to the Americans -- the true battle will be in the appellate courts.

Still, he warned, Canada has never refused to hand anyone over to the U.S.

Conroy added that current Justice Minister Irwin Cotler was not sympathetic to Emery's argument that he is a victim of political persecution and faces an overly harsh U.S. legal system.

In a previous ruling, Cotler said such a defence was precluded by Canada's commitments as a signatory to international drug conventions.

The B.C. Marijuana Party was to have sent a representative to Hempfest but decided at the last minute they risked arrest by U.S. law-enforcement.

Instead, the leader of the U.S. Marijuana Party, Loretta Nall, staffed a stall where she collected money for Emery's defence fund.

She told me she feared imminent arrest on money-laundering charges because Emery was her main financier.

"I figure about $250,000 in the last few years," she said.

If Washington was going after Emery, it only made sense that they would target her, in Nall's opinion, because she knew the money came from his seed business.

The FBI had visited her and her laptop had been seized on her return to the U.S. after a visit to Canada earlier this year, she said.

Also on hand to denounce Emery's arrest was the three-year-old Law Enforcement Against Prohibition group, which represents about 3,500 former and current cops, judges, customs officers and DEA agents.

"I think it's despicable," said Jack Cole, a former New Jersey drug squad officer and now LEAP executive director.

"What the DEA did there and what the U.S. Attorney sanctioned, is despicable. It's time we ended this pot prohibition. We keep saying, you can get over an addiction -- you can't get over a conviction."