This is so typical of the waste of taxpayer dollars to bust a guy who was entrapped...paid just so they wouldn't bust his 'ol lady and child...What a bunch of 'FUCKWADS' (sorry about the language) peace

Cheech and Chong were the first comedians to make fun of the stoner culture of the '60s and '70s -- the people who smoked marijuana

Kevin Griffin,
Vancouver Sun

On one level, A.K.A. Tommy Chong is a straightforward documentary about the prosecution, arrest and imprisonment of comedian Tommy Chong for selling pipes used to smoke marijuana. On another, it is an indictment of the U.S. federal justice system for abusing the law for its own political agenda by deliberately targeting Chong.

Tommy Chong became a household name in the 1960s and '70s as part of of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong. As a kind of Abbott and Costello for the counter culture, Cheech and Chong were the first comedians to make fun of stoner culture -- the people who smoked marijuana. They released six comedy albums and seven films, many of which involved the two comedians playing stoned characters on the run from inept police officers such as Sgt. Stedenko.

Although the duo eventually split and went their own ways, Chong kept doing comedy routines with his wife Shelby. Chong was also involved in his son's company Nice Dreams Enterprises which made bongs and water pipes -- many of which were used to smoke marijuana -- and sold them over the Internet.

Pennsylvania prohibits the sale of drug paraphernalia. As a recorded phone call in A.K.A. Tommy Chong shows, Nice Dreams wouldn't ship to Pennsylvania despite the repeated pleas of one insistent customer. In what Chong described as entrapment by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, a man from the Pennsylvania company travelled to the west coast, ordered $5,000 worth of bongs, and then left the goods in the warehouse in California. He then pleaded to have them shipped to Pennsylvania, which the company did eight months later.

According to Josh Gilbert's documentary, if the U.S. federal administration had been interested in protecting Americans from the evils of dope they would have warned drug paraphernalia retailers that a rarely enforced law was going to be enforced. That would have given everyone a chance to change their behaviour. But they didn't do that.

Instead, DEA officials -- and a Fox News crew -- showed up at Chong's home one morning. They also raided the company's warehouse, taking computers, cash and bongs.

U.S. federal law so favours the prosecution, according to the documentary, that plea bargains are the only way to save yourself from long prison terms. Even though he had only a tenuous relationship with Nice Dreams, Chong pleaded guilty to stop federal officials from seeking two-year prison terms for his wife and his son Paris. In court, prosecutors argued that Chong should do jail time for making movies that glorified drug use. They also cited a comment Chong made in an interview that referred to the U.S. administration's bogus justification for the invasion of Iraq: "The only weapons of mass destruction they found so far were my bongs."

He was fined $20,000 and had to forfeit $103,000. In addition, Chong was sentenced to nine months in a minimum-security federal prison, one of the few in Operation Pipe Dream who went to prison. The entire operation cost the U.S. federal government $12 million.

With the U.S. government about to invade Iraq and start the second Gulf War when charges against him were announced, Chong says that what the federal government did amounted to "a pre-emptive strike against the hippies and the anti-war movement.

"I do have a voice and my voice is against the Vietnam War -- every war," Chong, 68, said in a phone interview. "I just automatically took my stance. I said my view on the radio a few times and they just said: 'Take him down.' "

Chong said that he believes officials in the George W. Bush administration were surprised that he had never been arrested until Operation Pipe Dream, which was sanctioned by then-U.S. attorney-general John Ashcroft.

"They had no idea that I'm as articulate as I am and that I'm an actor. I was playing a role. I discovered a character and was entertaining people with my character," he said from Los Angeles. "Unfortunately, it did not fit in in with Bush's view of the world so they had to take me down. I became an enemy."

They say the best revenge is living well and Chong is doing just that. He's got a book coming out in August with a title that recalls the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. Called I Chong: Meditations from the Joint, it's an autobiography about the time he spent in jail.

Since his conviction, his career has taken off. He's now more popular than ever.

A.K.A. Tommy Chong has its Canadian theatrical debut at the VanCity Theatre in the Vancouver International Film Centre at Davie and Seymour. It runs from Friday, July 7 to Thursday, July 13.
latewood Reviewed by latewood on . Cdot news bulletin board, hosted by... check this out!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. FEDERAL, LOCAL POLICE BYPASSED SUBPOENAS, GOT PHONE DATA FROM BROKERS Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers. These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer Rating: 5