CANADA: The “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery has apologized for claiming to have smoked marijuana with Justin Trudeau several times. He now insists it was only once — a claim Trudeau denies.
The Liberal leader’s revelation on Thursday that he had smoked marijuana “five or six times” in his life, including once as an MP, has been the political story of the week. However, it also popularized a video from 2009 in which Emery claimed to have smoked pot with Trudeau several times.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOQqXOIwulw?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]
In a filmed public appearance, Emery told supporters the young Liberal MP was a hypocrite for voting for Bill C-15, which would have imposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses including marijuana possession.
Trudeau “has smoked with me four or five times,” Emery said, “so it really pisses me off when I see Justin Trudeau, who took big daggers with me, is in Parliament actually voting for Bill C-15.”
Now Emery has come clean, telling Sun Media he was lying in his on-stage rant.
“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,” read an emailed response to the news agency.
Trudeau has maintained that he only met Emery once, in a meeting where the pot activist smoked a joint but Trudeau abstained.
“I’ve never done it except with people I know and trust. And Marc Emery was someone I met but certainly not someone I ever thought of smoking with,” Sun News quoted Trudeau as saying at a Quebec press conference this week.
Emery, currently serving time in an American federal prison for distributing marijuana seeds through the mail, still maintains the two smoked up once in 2003 but admits he was upset with Trudeau’s support for Bill C-15 when he made the on-stage claim.
“I am wrong, wrong, wrong,” he said.