U.S. war on drugs belongs on other side of the border

VICTORIA - Do the crime, do the time.
That's a fair starting point for looking at the plight of Marc Emery, Vancouver's high-profile marijuana activist. The Americans have come gunning for Emery - with the help of Canadian police and prosecutors - and want to take him across the border and lock him up for a long time.
Look a little harder at the issues, and the picture changes.
Emery has been running a big marijuana seed business, with a catalogue that reads like a brochure for an upscale wine shop. His business is effectively legal in Canada. The law banning the sale of seeds hasn't been enforced since 1968, and Emery has been selling at his store and through multi-page magazine ads without any police action.
But Emery has also been selling seeds to customers in the U.S., and the Americans have spent years - and a pile of money - building a case against him.
On one hand Emery apparently made the decision to send seeds into the U.S., despite the obvious risks. (None of this has been proven, but there haven't been a lot of denials.) Decisions, especially bad ones, have consequences.
But the case isn't quite so simple.
Start with the legal issues. Canada and the U.S. have extradition treaties that make it easy to yank people across the border to face charges. Prosecutors just have to show is that there is enough evidence to justify a trial - whether a conviction is likely or not - and the suspect is on his way.
But the treaties say that people can't be extradited for offences that aren't considered crimes in their own country.
That raises one likely argument. The law against selling seeds is on the books in Canada, but unenforced. Prime Minister Paul Martin has promised to remove marijuana possession from the Criminal Code. Emery can make a good case that what he has been doing is no longer illegal in Canada, and he shouldn't face extradition. In Canada, there is no effective penalty for selling seeds. In the U.S., Emery and the two other people charged face a minimum term of 10 years, and the possibility of life behind bars. It's the kind of disparity that should raise doubts about the extradition request.
There are other questions.
While Canada has a legal obligation to respond to extradition applications once the U.S. has gathered the evidence, Canadian police and prosecutors still have the right to decide how much time they're prepared to devote to helping make the case.
When the U.S. police and prosecutors asked for help in investigating Emery, their Canadian counterparts could have politely declined.
That would have been a legitimate response. When DEA officers want to operate in Canada, they first need RCMP consent, and are shadowed by Canadian officers. It's time-consuming and diverts effort from other priorities. In the past Canadian police have just said no when the targets didn't justify the commitment.
Common sense says they should have said no this time, rather than spending almost a  year working with American officers. After all, they hadn't considered the seed sales a priority for the last decade. The public, based on most polls, doesn't consider it important.  
And there are a lot of crime problems that do need tackling, from meth labs to gang activity to violent assaults.
The U.S. government has been waging a costly, ineffective war on drugs for decades. The approach - trying to reduce supply, and lock up offenders - has accomplished nothing. Twenty years ago there were about 80,000 drug offenders in U.S. jails; now there are 400,000, at a cost of $16 billion a year.  
Addiction, death, crime and prisoners have all increased. The Americans are, of course, free to choose their response to drug use, no matter how irrational.
But the Canadian government doesn't have to sign on as partners helping bring a ineffective, destructive war on drugs across the border.
Footnote: One reason for Canadian police co-operation with the DEA is their belief that if they don't agree, the U.S. officers will go ahead illegally. The BC Supreme Court tossed out an extradition request in 2002 because of DEA wrongdoing in Canada. "The illegal conduct is extremely offensive because of the violation of Canadian sovereignty without explanation or apology," the court found.