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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US: Pot luck for Chong
Ed Condran NorthJersey.com
Wednesday 29 Mar 2006 Tommy Chong, who canceled his "Marijuana-Logues" spring tour last year under orders from his probation officer (fans were lighting up and throwing joints onto the stage), is back on the road and will perform Thursday at BergenPAC. The tall, lanky half of Cheech & Chong fills his somewhat subversive comedy show with anecdotes and insights inspired by cannabis. Chong used some of the earnings from his nearly 30-year career in weed humor to start a bong factory, which was shut down in 2003 in a government sting called Operation Pipe Dreams. Chong served nine months in prison in 2004. Lately he's been hitting the festival circuit, chatting up his new documentary, "a/k/a Tommy Chong." Q. Do you still wake and bake? No, at this age I wake and ache. Q. Did you have any idea that the feds were going to bust you for selling bongs? I did in a very spiritual sense. I was getting a message that something was going to go down. I was walking around the bong factory. I literally talked to the bongs. I asked, 'What's happening? What's going on?' I felt in my gut that something was going to happen. Q. You were sentenced on Sept. 11, 2003. Coincidence? That was planned by the Bush administration to take America's mind off the Iraq war. Q. What's the big deal about bongs? It's total inequity. It's about the total corruption of the system. We now have totally corrupted medicine like pot, which will give you jail time. Tobacco, however, will make you money. You can sell booze. Pot never killed anybody. Alcohol kills people every day. Q. Why did they arrest you? Because I'm the most visible opponent to the war against marijuana. I went on the radio opposing all of these anti-pot ads. I tell people like it is. Pot helps people who have cancer. It's medicinal. Q. Why did you plead guilty and just accept prison? I could have had the charge thrown out of court, but they would have went after my wife and son, and I didn't want that to happen. So I just decided to do the time. I'll get this expunged from my record later on. Q. So what was prison like? It's a privately owned industry. It's slave labor. People are working for like 50 cents a day making control panels for missiles. People don't know that. Q. But what was it like for you? I made the best of it. I looked at it as a spiritual retreat. I studied Catholicism and Judaism. I read about the Muslim world. It's basically all the same. People worship a higher power. It's just a matter of where the higher power resides. Q. Did you have any problems with any of the prisoners? No, they were great. I was in a minimum-security system with mostly con men. They were the most enjoyable people to be around. There was not one incident. They were very friendly, but that's their game -- we're talking about confidence men. Q. What was the saddest part of the experience? Aside from the obvious -- being away from my family -- it was the prison guards. They were fine to me, but they're in a sad situation. When you get down to it, I wasn't in prison. They're in prison. They go there every day. In these poor rural areas you have a hard time getting a job at Burger King. So they put on a uniform after they're sent to hate school. It's a horrible job. Their lives are in danger. For me, it was like going to a spa. The guards are doing the hard time. Q. Any regrets about being out of the glass pipe business? No. I never made money at it anyway. I was a half-million in the red, so the government did me a favor.
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