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The probable early future of many recreational drug users.
At least it looks like the state or family spared no expense to see them off! LOL
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."
Who said there would be 35,000 amendments?
A guy who goes home a drinks a 12 pack every night is a an alcoholic with some major problems.
I do support a general ban on all ABUSERS of alcohol.
Maybe after the first offense start to confiscate their wealth and eventually if you must keep them in a prison then use them to clean the roads to earn their way in life.
Tell that to an idiot Liberal and you will be accused of racism and wanting to starve children and the elderly. There is an entire poverty industry that has sprung up from your LBJ Great Society constitutionalism.
The War on Drugs, like the War on Poverty, is a failed big government social program. It even has its own equivalent of Poverty Pimps defending their failed policies in order to keep their feeding place at the public trough.
Ha! Most ignorant post of the day! The guy is a health nut and a couple of joints a day ain't about to kill anyone.
All Marijuana is, is another "Control point" put into the legal system that continues to this day.
These control points also include mandatory auto insurance and seat belts.
1 degree at a time is how you boil a frog.
The probable early future of many recreational drug users.
At least it looks like the state or family spared no expense to see them off! LOL
Marijuana is a drug. The people using it have "CONTROL" problems.
"Maybe after the first offense start to confiscate their wealth and eventually if you must keep them in a prison then use them to clean the roads to earn their way in life."
Is that you Saddam?
If you are picked up by a hospital, police or at work drunk, that isn't the Taliban, it's your own consequences coming back at you.
Better to not ABUSE alcohol or to use illegal drugs which is abuse all the time.
Red herring; I asked about a guy getting drunk (NOT poisoned) AT HOME.
No more than the people who use Alchohol.
It's a government control issue.
You keep making this claim with no proof. If that's not a lie it's the next-worst thing.
If they get themselves to the point where they are in the system, yep they will reap the consequences.
I think even now they have their wealth fined away from them and they lose other assets like their homes in civil suits if they hurt someone.
Make a nice study for yourself as to how things get into the system and how long it takes.
Yes, the people who abuse alcohol are equally out of control as are all recreational drug users. It is a lack of self-control and irresponsibility issue, has ZERO to do with government.
That's like saying if there was no enforcement of the rape law that all rape behavior would stop and that is an irrational view IMO.
What does that have to do with use vs. abuse? And are you excluding orally ingested drugs (e.g. LSD) from your claim about "always abuse"?
Because you don't have an abuse with alcohol in moderation and if it takes time to get going, you may never have a problem.
With pot and other drugs, it goes to a whole different area of the brain with it's effects (which you are welcome to go research as I have in the past).
Smoking gets things into the system faster and more effectively because the lungs instantly send it everywhere in the body.
That is one of the reasons there are inhalers...
Alcohol takes a few minutes, which is not enough time to avoid problems. And as I aksed, what about orally ingested drugs (e.g. LSD)?
With pot and other drugs, it goes to a whole different area of the brain with it's effects
That doesn't prove that one is abuse and the other is not.
"Marijuana is a drug. The people using it have "CONTROL" problems."
Marijuana is the flower of an herb used throughout the ages by many cultures. The people that say they want to "CONTROL" the use of this herb are deceitful "CONTROL" freaks that demonize material things while blind to the demons possessing their hearts causing them to wage war upon their brothers and sisters in Christ. Their sin is compounded by their motivation for war; the manipulation and "CONTROL" of markets to maintain their own dominance at the expense of all the people that would benefit from truly free and open markets in products provided by this herb (including energy).
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