Attention, concerned citizens of the United States of America: It is now safe to unlock your doors and let your children back out onto the streets to play hopscotch and jump rope. Yes, the long and terrible reign of the Prince of Pot is over. No longer will this menacing merchant of the devil’s weed terrorize and addict our innocent youth to his mind-destroying plants.

For those of you who don’t have the slightest clue what I’m talking about, Marc Emery, a longtime outspoken advocate for the legalization of marijuana has agreed to a plea bargain under which he will serve five years for money laundering and selling of marijuana seeds.

When Emery was originally arrested in 2005, Special Agent in Charge Rodney G. Benson of the Drug Enforcement Agency said, “The tentacles of the Mark Emery criminal enterprise reached out across North America to include all 50 United States and Canada.”

There’s just one little problem with all of this. Emery is a Canadian citizen living in Vancouver, British Columbia.

There are some who might argue Emery was begging to be arrested, and indeed, he has never shied away from talking openly about his feelings on marijuana legislation. He has been an outspoken advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana and, to further that end, he also publishes Cannabis Culture, a bimonthly magazine focused on, to quote directly from its Web site, “bringing an end to the vicious worldwide war on drugs.” Emery also sold seeds through his magazine, more than 500 varieties of pot, grass, reefer . you get the idea. It is this seed-selling enterprise that has drawn the wrath of the American authorities.

Is Emery guilty? Hell yes, and proud of it. During a phone interview with AlterNet, an award-winning news magazine, Emery said, “The idea is that we’d sell seeds, people would grow lots of pot, empower themselves by not needing to buy on the black market, by being self-sufficient in marijuana and medical marijuana. Hopefully, people would grow so much pot that the DEA could never eradicate it all, and it would be futile spending all that money. Then Americans would simply say, ‘Well, why should we spend all this money when it’s impossible to stop? We should legalize it.'”

While we all no doubt have opinions about the issues of marijuana legalization/decriminalization, that is not the real issue. The real issue here is the idea of national sovereignty and of the U.S. government’s desperate, flailing attempts to make headway in its War on Drugs, which is going about as well as our War on Poverty, the War on Terror and President Bush’s own private War on Syntax and Grammar.

While Emery does not attempt to deny that his company has no doubt sold seeds to Americans, he has always done so from north of the border, where he is a tax-paying citizen of Canada. He has even served jail time in Canada for his fondness for the herb. But Canada is becoming increasingly tolerant of marijuana, much to the chagrin of U.S. officials, with the major Canadian political parties such as the NDP, Bloc and the Liberal Party of Canada all adopting a more green-friendly stance. While marijuana is still technically illegal in Canada, there is growing public support for its decriminalization, and cannabis culture (both the magazine and the lifestyle) are generally tolerated by the authorities. This increasingly liberal ideology directly contrasts with the $12.7 billion War on Drugs being waged by the U.S.

As much as DEA officials might loathe the inaction of the Canadian officials’ failure to adequately prosecute Emery, their violation of national sovereignty by demanding that he be tried in American courts and incarcerated in our (already over-crowded) prison system is a blatant attempt to police the world. Given that Emery’s actions occurred well within the confines of the Canadian borders and that he is a Canadian citizen, it would seem only logical that he be tried in the Canadian legal system after being charged with violating Canadian law, but that’s not what’s happening.

American officials continue to adopt an increasingly invasive stance regarding other nations’ sovereignty, handing out regime changes and prosecuting their criminals for them, all while proclaiming they don’t want to police the world. Well, it sure doesn’t look that way from where I’m sitting.

– Quincy Miller is a senior in English from Altoona.