Fed

Just days before sentencing in the US Federal Court case against Canadian Marc Emery on charges of Marijuana Trafficking, the former lead US prosecutor in the case has called for the end of Marijuana prohibition.

In an opinion column published in the Seattle Times on September 3, 2010, former US Attorney John McKay said the "public is endangered" by continued adherence to the policy of Marijuana prohibition:

As Emery's prosecutor and a former federal law-enforcement official… I'm not afraid to say out loud what most of my former colleagues know is true: Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong and should be changed through the legislative process to better protect the public safety.

McKay attributed the growing power of the drug cartels to US Marijuana policy. According to McKay, prohibition policy itself is the object of  "exploitation by Mexican and other international drug cartels and gangs."

Calling the federal policy on Marijuana "wrongheaded", McKay sided with Marijuana decriminalization advocates, writing that "informed adult choice…may well be preferable to the legal and policy meltdown we have long been suffering over marijuana."

So the policy is wrong, the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections.

Now a law professor at Seattle University, McKay was the United States Attorney in Seattle when he indicted Marc Emery in 2005. He was sacked the following year when the Bush Administration carried out its 2006 dismissal of US Attorneys.

A Canadian entrepreneur, politician, and Cannabis activist, Emery faces 5 years in US federal prison on a single count of Conspiracy to Manufacture Marijuana.

Emery was deported and extradited to the US earlier this year.