Canada’s most famous cannabis activists will be in a Toronto courtroom today on charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Following raids in March on Cannabis Culture shops in Ontario and Vancouver, Marc Emery was booked on more than a dozen marijuana-related charges, as well as conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
His wife, Jodie Emery, faces five counts, including conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
Yesterday, Jodie Emery wrote a lengthy article on the Cannabis Culture website under the following headline: ‘Cannabis Culture dispensaries: What I did, and why’.
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It tells the story about how she was hired as assistant editor of Cannabis Culture magazine in February 2005, married Marc Emery the following year, and her political, advocacy, and commercial activities since then.
She noted that when her husband was imprisoned for nearly five years in Georgia and Mississippi for selling cannabis seeds through the mail, she visited him 81 times while running the company in his absence.
In 2016, the couple decided to open a ‘new model of retail adult-use distribution, to demonstrate what legalization should look like with respect to legal cannabis sales’, she wrote.
The Cannabis Culture shops mirrored cannabis coffee shops in Amsterdam.
‘Our new business approach was modelled after Marc Emery’s decades of successful civil disobedience and law reform supported by the income from cannabis-focused businesses,’ she stated.
In 2016 the couple decided to pursue a franchise model to expand more rapidly.
‘Marc Emery became a franchise owner for a Toronto shop on Church Street beginning September, 2016,’ Jodie Emery revealed. ‘To simplify the franchise arrangement as we worked out the details for what we wanted to officially offer to entrepreneurs, we charged a 6% gross flat fee, with no buy-in or additional costs. We offered the same deal to Britney Guerra for a Hamilton franchise shop that opened November 15, 2016.’
Jodie Emery said there were 18 franchises when police raided their businesses in March.
Yesterday, she also tweeted a long list names of former police officers and politicians who previously opposed legalization and who are now cashing in on the looming legalization of marijuana. Opening the tweet below will reveal their identities.
