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."
In the United States, it's someone who adheres to the ideals on which the nation was founded. That excludes A CA Guy, who rejects those ideals as outdated.
From the post to which your #100 was a response. Learn to read.
Yeah, a socialist nation like America from colonial times through early 20th Century America...the productive were sure required to subsidize the leeches then...right? And And, is Coca-Cola considered to be an icon of Socialism, or Capitalism? And do you know how it got it's name?
If you want that kind of society so badly, why don't you move there, chump? Oh yeah...that'd get in the way of living in your parents' basement, now wouldn't it?
Again, the silly, crude ad hominem, attack: With your obsession with people living in their parent's basement, that couldn't be where youlive, could it? I think we have the reason for Prime Choice's basement obsession.
Yes, libertarians embrace the darkness, and seemingly Nambla as well on the same side as the ACLU quite often.
Well, yes, if I were to refer to myself as conservative, it would refer to my belief in the original intent of our founding fathers and my faith in the Constitution.
The definition I gave, though, describes how I see an awful lot of modern conservatives.
LOL! Poifekt!
They are operating in the public arena and this is beyond the issue of living a private life. The public has the right to a certain level of civility in their civilization.
Here is your #106 referring to my #100:
Why does giving the public conditional access to your property lessen your right to say what's allowed or not allowed on that property? Sounds like socialism to me. 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.
The italic quote that was made to look like it came from my #100 did not and wasn't from me, it was from you.... From elsewhere you say!
Say your prayers, don't do drugs or get drunk real regular and you will be the better for it.
At one time, I was proud to be among the surviving FR Class of 2004.
Now I'm starting to become embarrassed by that fact.
Why does the libertarian party need to embrace every vice they can?
Seems conservatives want to be the best they can be, and the libertarians want to be the most out of control and illegally medicated they can be!
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." It's a great thing that so many on FR are smart enough, strong enough, and honest enough to respond appropriately to the evil when it's posted...
Note also that the loudest on the other side tonight didn't join in 2000 as you did. They're '04'ers.
2004 was a bitch, I'll grant that.
Sorry about my classmates anyway.
Also drink milk, bath regularly, and always change your underwear. Brush your teeth after every meal. Read each day the biography's of notable men. Get eight hours of sleep each night and drink eight glasses of water a day. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. A penny saved is a penny earned. Three good meals a day is bad living.
I don't think we need to grow our drunks, dopers, child molesters or social liberals at all.
If you put IMO the libertarian government dream together, I think it would look like the movie "Escape From New York".
Pure anarchy is what they would have for such a large population as ours.
Libertarians are best suited as the politics of sparsely inhabited islands. There they can chase their pets while nude under the moonlight and few would care.
They could be 2000's that were banned and signed back up in 2004 like Mr. Leroy, right Know Your Rights?
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
Three good meals a day is bad living."
Very good, except I have nothing against three good meals a day, as long as you snack in between to keep your weight down.
Note also that nobody on the other side of whom I asked for a straight answer gave one.
;)
... Got 'yer back, Guy.
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