Earlier this week, Justin Trudeau was telling reporters that he had smoked pot perhaps “five or six times” in his life.
But in a 2010 video, Canada’s most well-known pot activist, Marc Emery said he had smoked “gaggers” with Trudeau “four or five times.”
Watch:
Asked this week about Emery’s claim, Trudeau said Emery had it wrong.
So how to settle this?
Well, our Vancouver-based reporter Paige MacPherson made a transcript of the 2010 YouTube video and, through his wife Jodie, submitted the transcript to Marc who, right now, is in Yazoo City Prison in Mississippi serving a 5-year sentence for pot-related offences.
Here is the reply MacPherson received Friday evening from Emery via his wife Jodie [Jodie removed the names of others identified her replacing them with ****]:
Dear Paige,
I have to completely agree with Justin Trudeau on this.
I’m embarrassed to be told (as I read the transcript you have kindly provided) I am recorded on a video saying I’ve smoked with him 4 or 5 times.
It was only one evening in the company of fellow IDEACITY alumni ****** (she didn’t smoke) and ********** that Justin Trudeau, myself and ********** smoked some joints on the 2nd floor patio of a restaurant on Broadway Avenue in Vancouver in August 2003.
I was aware, by the time of that speech in the summer of 2009, that Justin Trudeau had smoked pot on 5 occasions because I knew many people in Whistler who had claimed to have shared pot with him. But absolutely my experience is limited to the one time on one evening in August 2003. We might have shared up to 5 joints (“4 or 5 times” I suppose) that night (********* and myself doing most of the smoking) but definitely on only one occasion.
I’m deeply embarrassed to be responsible for remarks that are categorically untrue, and had I seen that video (it has been on the internet only since I’ve been incarcerated), I would have tried to get it edited to be correct. So Mr. Trudeau is absolutely correct when he says, from his perspective, that I’m “flat-out lying”, although, really, knowing the truth would out, as it would have to, I was definitely exaggerating the 5 joints into “4 or 5 times”, a very loose and irresponsible misrepresentation of what most reasonable people would regard “4 or 5 times”.
If what I said was I’ve smoked with him on 4 or 5 occasions, I am indeed recorded telling a falsehood that until now, I was unaware was out there. I’m totally embarrassed about it. I take my reputation very seriously, as of course, does Mr. Trudeau, and I’m really saddened that I have caused him some grief by this clear misrepresentation.
My knowledge of his having partaken on 4 or 5 occasions plus my own singular experience seems to be slurred together and that really is deeply disturbing to me. I apologize to Mr. Trudeau especially, and any members of the media that are using my comments as the basis for criticism of the Liberal leader.
I am wrong, wrong, wrong, and am so embarrassed by those remarks. That video was recoded in July 2009, I was clearly upset that in the 2009 session of Parliament, Mr. Trudeau supported the Conservative legislation on mandatory minimums for pot, and 4 or 5 joints became 4 or 5 times in the heat of the moment of that speech, Mr. Trudeau’s vote fresh in my mind.
I will say he’s taken an admirable and very astute position on the issue and I’m deeply embarrassed to be the cause of confusion and misrepresentation in the matter.
Marc Emery
Yazoo City Federal Prison
it’s up to each country just how vigorously they wish to pursue pot …
but with our future citizens all ‘having a giggle’, just how much money do we want to dump into this thing ??
there are ideas that stand the test of time / some that clearly don’t –
we have a neighbour on the verge of becoming poor because they (flat out) refused to consider changing times and attitudes.
it makes no sense to spend what our neighbours surely must spend on out and out failed policies –
I guess the question is ‘do we learn from them or no ??’
Marc has integrity, I’ve never heard anything to the contrary, and I’ve been following his story since I met him in ’99. Emery is not a liar.
With any luck Marc will be done his sentence and home in time for the 2015 vote. In which with the help of both Trudeau and Emery hopefully we can give that idiot Harper the boot.
two liars do not make a right.