Marc Emery has contracted a medical super-bug while extradited to the United States and serving a five year prison sentence for selling marijuana seeds.

When Marc Emery was arrested for selling marijuana seeds through the mail, the DEA called it a blow against the legalization movement. Much to the DEA’s pleasure, Marc is now serving a five year prison term for his seed selling. The interesting thing about Marc’s case is that he is a Canadian citizen. He was arrested and sentenced in America for running a business that was legal in his home country. After his arrest, Marc began serving his prison term honorably and even teaches a business management class to the prisoners. This seemed to be the end of the story, until recently when Marc came down with a rare, antibiotic resistant disease.

Marc caught the disease while he was being held at a private correctional facility in Georgia. The idea that a private company’s success is based upon putting people in jail is an entirely different problem. While at the facility, Marc said he remembers being out on the lawn and feeling a sharp pinch on the rear. At the time he thought he had been bitten by the poisonous brown recluse spider native to Georgia. As is normal for brown recluse bites, the poison developed into a hole in his flesh. The bite eventually healed, but a month later while at a federally run facility he developed a boil that turned out to be a very rare, antibiotic resistant form of staph. Marc and his wife believe that the bite weakened his immune system to the point where he got infected.

In the worst kind of irony, it looks as if this antibiotic resistant bug is cured by marijuana. Marc’s wife has been researching his condition and says that a study from Italy and the UK three years ago showed marijuana was a far more effective treatment. As his wife points out, however, there is no chance of him getting marijuana in jail. Despite this tragic irony, Marc remains an incredible spirit. Those who thought this would end his activism are surprised, as this has only spurred him on to also focus take on prison conditions alongside marijuana as his newest crusade. Like he has always done the profits from his business will not go to increasing his personal wealth, but to fight for the causes he believes in.

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