Posted on 09/12/2005 4:36:47 PM PDT by freepatriot32
TORONTO (Reuters) - Comedian Tommy Chong has spent almost three decades wringing laughs from cigar-sized joints and smoke-filled vans but now a nine-month jail term has turned him serious and revitalized his flagging career.
Promoting his documentary "a/k/a Tommy Chong" at the Toronto International Film Festival, he hopes the film will expose what he says is the U.S. government's heavy-handed dealing with marijuana offenders in the post-September 11 era.
"The United States is under martial law, it's under dictatorship," the 67-year-old father of four said in an interview.
The film chronicles the Canadian-born comedian's 2003 arrest and imprisonment for selling drug paraphernalia online to an undercover U.S. drug enforcement agent.
The bust was part of a sting operation known as "Operation Pipe Dreams," which the film likens to a witch hunt by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft following claims that drug trafficking financed terrorist activities.
The film's producers say the federal government spent $12 million pursuing Chong and compare that to the $25 million bounty for the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Chong has been an outspoken marijuana advocate since his days in the Cheech and Chong comedy team, which rode pot culture to fame in the 1970s with films like "Up in Smoke" and "Still Smokin."
The documentary suggests the government's motive was not to rid the Internet of a mail-order pipe-and-bong business but to send a message about Chong's three decades of movies and stand-up routines celebrating marijuana use.
"DEA AFRAID"
"The DEA was afraid that 'Up in Smoke' (the 1978 movie that made Cheech and Chong a household name) was going to be around forever and ever subverting young kids," Chong said. "Now, we've got this documentary that's going to be around forever."
Faced with the prospect of seeing his wife and son -- who was running the pipe business -- being prosecuted, Chong said he made a deal to serve nine months in a minimum-security prison
"It was easier for me to go to jail and do the time than it would be to fight," he said.
Since his release in 2004, Chong has worked the ordeal into his comedy routines and has been enjoying a larger stage than in his recent past.
"Jay Leno is a good example," he said. "He had me on the 'Tonight Show' before but just for little peripheral things, never on the couch, and when this happened, now I've been on the couch twice now."
"It's like the weed culture. You just wait, it'll change. Everything changes. Bush won't be in power forever, Ashcroft is already gone. There's going to be another cycle and it's going to go the other way."
Thinking that one must have unfettered access to mind-numbing drugs to be "free" is stupid. Drugs don't make you free.
Wearing a plaid shirt doesn't make you free, either ... so is it OK for government to ban that too?
Listen, just go back to smoking dope in your parents' basement. You must be better at that 'cause it's obvious you suck at logic and reason.
That vaporous excuse for a principle has no clear boundary, and thus is incompatible with any respect for liberty. DUers would be glad to claim that all their income-redistribution projects are needed to "maintain something called a civilization."
So you agree that not all drug use, but only excessive drug use, is unconservative.
It has a boundry that is set by the public themselves or by the representatives they voted in to represent them in this Democratic Republic. :-)
There are some changes all the time due to current living conditions.
If you don't like laws, (like I've told you before), go buy your own island and be the King.
They are operating in the public arena
That doesn't answer my question; it merely rephrases its premise ("giving the public conditional access to your property"). But then, it's clear that you have no honest answers for my questions.
I was saying that I agree with you that excessive alcohol use is an issue for sure, especially if it is all the time and not once by accident.
Prescription drugs or over the counter stuff used as directed are OK with me. Sometimes we later learn of adverse side effects and must make adjustments or pull some of it from the market.
A perfectly valid logical technique. If anyone told you otherwise, they lied.
So he really isn't a hypocrite then? You said he was a hypocrite which would mean he smocked pot but told everyone else how bad it was.
OK this has to be the FR "Idiot Post of the Day." I suppose you don't consider nicotine a drug, or tobacco users as "recreational" users? And alcohol is not a "drug?" I've known plenty of conservative smokers, and have gone out drinking with many conseratives, it was "recreational." In fact I've known pot-smoking conservatives, the vice-chairman of my college YAF chapter was for instance a pot-smoker, and he wasn't a "liberal-tarian," he was a Trad, and Lutheran to boot. (And he was no burn-out, besides being an active YAFfer, he got "A"s in pharmacy.) Oh, and I guess you don't consider Rush a conservative either? Hmmmm?
What were you referring to in my #100?
LOL! I love the irony of a blatant ad hominem followed by a boast of superior logic.
That's no boundary at all, it's what the Founders called tyranny of the majority.
So should it be against the law to be drunk in one's own home with no minor children present? And should non-excessive use of other drugs be legal? Or are you just blowing more smoke?
If you drink enough, you bet. Did you not know that?
I'm sure you do, considering that you use that very approach often enough. I figured it was time to give you a dose of your own rank medicine.
Small wonder this silliness wound up in General Chat. *snicker*
Your question makes no sense.
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