Saddled with an economy that's as much about scrambling to hold onto the jobs we've got as trying to create new ones, eastern Ontario has chased many ventures over the years to find that magic economic bullet.

Fantasia, anyone?

But it turns out there's been a possible economic salvation under our noses all along: marijuana.

Weed has been on my mind for much of this week.

And before my bosses - and Brockville police - get too excited, let me be clear that it's been more than two decades since I actually crossed paths with pot.

Honest, guys.

No, it's not a sudden hankering for a joint that has me thinking about the bud and its role in an economy that lurks under the radar. Instead it was an interview with one of Canada's foremost marijuana activists.

Marc Emery, B.C.-based publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and self-proclaimed prince of pot, is definitely a media darling.

Spend some time on the phone with him and you'll find out why. He's a reporter's dream with his in-your-face attitude to authority and ability to fire off one great quote after another.

I spoke to Emery to provide the other side of the marijuana debate to an article about the OPP's preparations to ramp up their outdoor marijuana eradication efforts.

Emery didn't disappoint.

Rather than the folks in the white hats, Emery portrayed the police and their heavy handed approach to marijuana as thorns in the side of small-town economies.

In fact, in criticizing them, he sounds not unlike an Ontario Tory MPP slamming Premier Dalton McGuinty for hurting the economy in this neck of the woods.

"These grows provide billions of dollars to people in rural Canada and that money is essential in many small towns across Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia," Emery opines.

How much?

Try $7 billion, which is what he says Canada's "marijuana industry" generates every year.

To Emery, the typical pot grower is just an average Joe Canuck trying to make a buck in hard times.

"There's half a million Canadians in the marijuana industry," said Emery, adding, "Do we have half a million members of organized crime in Canada and all in the marijuana industry? I don't think so.

"These are all ordinary Canadians."

He spins a great story, but I'm not fully buying what he's selling.

Two local busts by police this week in which police seized harder drugs like meth along with weapons and stolen property would suggest Emery's romanticizing the portrait of pot production quite a bit.

You're not going to convince him it's anything more than another "industry," though.

In fact, he says it's the "perfect" Canadian product, made better by the fact growers are largely environmentally friendly: their only emission is the smoke puffed out by happy customers.

"All you need is some dirt, water, some seeds and human labour and you can produce out of nothing billions of dollars that (land) didn't produce before," said Emery.

Of course, those billions in revenue only exist because the government continues to make marijuana illegal.

Legalize it and the "risk money" pot smokers are now paying to toke up vanishes as the bottom drops out of the market.

Emery knows this. He estimates the street value of weed would drop by as much as five times if the stuff were legalized - although you better believe government taxes would keep the price, ahem, high.

So much then for any hopes of turning those now illegal grow ops that dot the eastern Ontario landscape into money-makers.

One question though. If it makes so much economic good sense and if pot growers really are as harmless as any other cash cropper, why then is the stuff still illegal?

"Because government doesn't make sense," countered Emery.

Then he really ratchets up the us-against-the-man rhetoric, telling me, "Government is the monopoly of control over the people and whenever people want liberty it has to be taken pretty well by force or near force from the government itself."

And even if people can someday enjoy a doobie without fear of prosecution, Emery is quick to point out activists like him will never be out of business.

"It doesn't matter because the day we legalize marijuana, somebody's going to want to make it illegal again."

2004 H.U.M.A.N.: Hemp Users Medical Access Network - Toronto Medical Marijuana