Comment by sirdogealot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sirdogealot | Hacker News Reader

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The same thing that would happen to any country or state that decided to stop participating in the war on drugs.

They would be sanctioned and heckled by other city governments.

They may even have their drug enforcement programs carried out by other governments, like when Canada sat back for years while Marc Emery sold Marijuana seeds worldwide.

The DEA basically coughed and the RCMP had Emery arrested on the spot and extradited to the U.S.A. to face charges in a country he was not even a resident of.[0]

I am sure there was a bit more to it than that. The USA probably insinuated some very strong consequences for Canada if they didn't turn him over. But that's entirely speculation.

Marc Emery aka "the prince of pot" remains incarcerated in the U.S.A. to this day.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Emery#2005_arrest_and_extr...

I live a block away from Emery's store. There's a seed store still there that is doing exactly what Emery was doing (selling pot seeds to Americans) yet they haven't been busted. This is probably because it's owner didn't give a million dollars to NORML in the US to fight prohibition of Marijuana.

Emery also writes a federal prison blog, interesting insight into how foreign prisoners are treated in the US, like the time he spent at D.Ray Fed prison where it's entirely made up of foreigners. No racism/forced segregation based on skin color, no homogeneous gangs of all one ethnicity, they all live together in dorms without any of the problems he saw in other fed prisons like Seatac where some guy threatened him because he was playing dominos with a black inmate and that was "not allowed".

Very interesting. I was not aware that there are "foreigner only prisons". I wonder why they exist?

I haven't kept up on his blog writings much, as it's too depressing to be honest.

Which is a shame considering he is such a great writer.

Thankfully, he should be out soon and it doesn't sound like they have broken his spirit one bit.

> I was not aware that there are "foreigner only prisons". I wonder why they exist?

Probably to avoid the complaints from foreign embassies over mistreatment of their citizens.

Too bad we don't have a US embassy here in the US to complain about mistreatment of US citizens in US prisons.

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