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I got the chance to sit down with cannabis legend Tommy Chong at the International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco. Chong, 77, is parlaying his cannabis celebrity into a new brand, Chong's Choice, as well as co-hosting a podcast with his son, Paris, to be hosted on CannabisRadio.com. I asked Tommy about the state of marijuana and politics, beginning with the Republicans. "I love Donald Trump," Chong told me, "he personifies everything the Republican Party is about." When asked about the unexpectedly exciting battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, Chong replied, "We've only got...

Tommy Chong, star of such films as Up in Smoke and until this week a contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, was the #OneLuckyGuy on Fox News’ Outnumbered (for some reason) Wednesday, and while he was there he weighed in on issues like marijuana legalization (naturally), health care, and immigration. But when the issue of Obamacare “architect” Jonathan Gruber’s controversial comments came up, Chong surprised the show’s co-hosts by comparing it to another hot topic on Fox: Benghazi. Andrea Tantaros and Harris Faulkner were expressing outrage over Gruber’s comments and the Obama administration’s reaction to it when Chong decided...

Actor and comedian Cheech Marin says he and longtime comedy partner Tommy Chong may soon reunite on film. […] The 67-year-old, known as one half of “Cheech & Chong,” says there have been discussions about starting a project within the next year. Meanwhile, the two have been touring together. …

Parody of Michael Phelps' Olympic TV Ad: TV Ad Pitchman: "To be the greatest swimmer in the world, Michael Phelps doesn’t just train every day, he smokes…" Michael Phelps: "Hawaii Maui Waui, skunk red hair, Thai stick, and purple haze…"

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...

Tommy Chong never was much of a stoner, but one of his most popular characters (“Man”) was. So when Tommy’s son Paris put Man’s face on the surfaces of seditiously shaped blown glass (bongs, pipes) and was blatantly entrapped into sending 5,000 bucks’ worth across state lines to undercover feds, Ashcroft’s Justice Department took the opportunity to send Tommy to the Wackenhut-managed Taft Correctional Institution for nine magical months, to punish him not only for financing and promoting his son’s glass-blowing studio but for, as the federal prosecutor put it, “glamorizing the illegal distribution and use of marijuana” in entertainment...

Comedian Tommy Chong began a nine-month federal prison sentence on October 7 for operating a glass-blowing shop that sold pipes to marijuana smokers. Prosecutors were not impressed that his Nice Dreams Enterprises marketed a morally neutral product. Chong's pipes, after all, could be used with loose-leaf tobacco, just as any stoner in an Armani suit can smoke pot in a lawful Dunhill meerschaum. In fact, as the Los Angeles Times reported October 10, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Houghton's court pleadings sought Chong's harsh punishment because he got rich "glamorizing the illegal distribution and use of marijuana" in films that "trivialize...

This is another pot story, starring Tommy Chong. So it should be funny. Only this time, it's not. Not to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who announced dozens of indictments under "Operation Pipe Dreams" in February. Not to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Mary Beth Buchanan, who heads Ashcroft's advisory committee and turned up in court in Pittsburgh to personally accept Chong's guilty plea. Not to Asst. U.S. Dist. Atty. Mary Houghton, who prosecuted the case. And definitely not to Tommy Chong, who will be spending the next nine months in federal prison. On Wednesday, Chong turned...

<p>PITTSBURGH — Actor-comedian Tommy Chong (search) reported to a privately run federal prison to serve his nine-month sentence for conspiring to sell bongs and other drug paraphernalia over the Internet even as his attorneys prepared to argue for his release pending appeal.</p>

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Saturday September 20, 2003 The Guardian One of America's best-known counter-cultural comedians, Tommy Chong, is facing the prospect of a nine-month jail sentence after being convicted of selling glass pipes on the internet which can be used for smoking cannabis. Lawyers for Chong, 65, one half of the famous Cheech and Chong comedy duo and more recently a television actor, claim the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, chose to prosecute him for the publicity value. The glass pipes, or "bongs", that Chong has been offering for sale are the same as those that have been...

Tommy Chong Will Be Free in Prison I feel genuine shock and sorrow upon the news that Tommy Chong is going to prison for nine months. At the same time I am joyful. For one thing, the only other prominent American who up till now is serving a newsworthy jail term for a paraphernalia conviction is Chris Hill, who was such an outspoken Young Republican that it was hard to garner much sympathy for him even within the tobacco accessories industry. There was always a bit of schadenfreude whenever Hill's fourteen month stint at the Eglin prison facility was mentioned....

In the 1978 cult classic "Up in Smoke," comedian Tommy Chong plays a stoner on the run from a particularly uptight Drug Enforcement Administration agent. But when life imitated art recently, Chong had little to laugh about. Late last month, DEA agents raided the comic's Los Angeles-area home and glass pipe business, seizing the company's merchandise. Chong was not arrested but still seems dazed by the crackdown. "It shows desperation, and that's scary," says Chong, who rose tofame as one half of the '70s pothead pair, Cheech & Chong. "If I posea threat, then they're sort of fishing for anything."...