Dave's Not Here

Tommy Chong has been sentenced to nine months for selling bongs online. Reader Chris Howell points out that this is more than ABC's reporters are likely to get for smuggling uranium. (Please note: We are not advocating charges against the ABC reporters, just noting the irony.)

Comments

[Mogwai]

This f***ing drug war has got to stop. The only thing Tommy has ever done was make people laugh and feel better from it. And now they're putting him in a cage.

[Mogwai]

This f***ing drug war has got to stop. The only thing Tommy has ever done was make people laugh and feel better from it. And now they're putting him in a cage.

[Brady]

I'm sure America is much safer now.

[Citizen]

The only thing Tommy has ever done was make people laugh...

^As a technical matter, he also sold $100,000 worth of bongs and pipes on the internet. I'm just saying, they didn't lock him up for making folks laugh. And it's only 9 months.

[Citizen]

What was the matter with "Earache, my Eye!"

Tickle you, yeah, I'll tickle you!

[Jim Walsh]

Here in North Dakota, where methamphetamines are a big deal, the government is now keeping an ever-watchful eye on people who buy (homemade-meth ingredient)Sudafed. Where will it end...

[Pete Guither]

Thank God we're finally doing something about these bong kingpins. Now we can win the war on drugs.

Already I'm seeing young people emerging from their dope dens, squinting in the sunlight and exclaiming "There are no more ornate glass smoking devices! It is now impossible to smoke pot! I guess I'll have to quit!"

I am concerned about the measly nine-month sentence. After all, drug use supports terrorism. And bongs support drug use... I guess we'll have to wait until the Victory Act is passed, when we'll be able to start putting glass blowers away for 20 years for knowingly providing support to terrorist organizations...

[Warren]

This is so damn depressing, a total buzz kill. I need a drink.

[Anonymous]

Tommy Chong has spent much of the last several years doing a "comedy" act that consist of well-worn doper material and blasting Cheech for having the good sense to move onto something new.

If you want to put him in jail for that, fine. But this bong stuff is crazy.

[Mogwai]

Warren: Gangbusters

Citizen: "Only" 9 months?? Go ahead and spend one day in a cage with a 350 pound girlfriend and tell me how you like it.

The bottom line is, the man did not commit any crimes as far as I'm concerned.

[mdd]

How mad have we -- as a society -- gone when you can walk into a Walmart and buy a rifle that can kill people, yet it is illegal to buy what amounts to a fancy glass tube?

And these are the laws they want to build on for the war on terror?

Maybe it's time to give up and just take the crazy pills...

[Mark A.]

Interesting juxtaposition, Tim. Beaver Falls, where Chong was stung, was home to the US's first commercial nuclear reactor (Shippingport).

[R.C. Dean]

"How mad have we -- as a society -- gone when you can walk into a Walmart and buy a rifle that can kill people, yet it is illegal to buy what amounts to a fancy glass tube?"

I guess I see the glass as half full on this one.

Thank God you can walk into a Walmart and buy a rifle! Too bad you can't also pick up a bong while you're in there.

[Citizen]

Mogwai, of course I wouldn't want to get jailed. That's why I wouldn't do dumbshit things that would get me there. Especially if I were a marginally well-known personality that made my career off of doing illegal things for laughs.

[7.62]

mdd

In the end it may be the fact that you can go into wal mart and buy a rifle that preserves your right to buy a fancy glass tube.

[Anonymous]

I wonder how many bongs our soldiers will bring back from Iraq.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure the government will make some sort of exception for bong collectors. You'll just have to register them with the feds.

[dude]

/Grandpa Simpson Voice

Back in my day, when we were innocent, and Sam Kinnison taught us to laugh again, we could make a perfect workable smoking device out of an empty cardboard toilet paper tube, some aluminum foil, and a pin. No really.

When will these liberals learn that we're not going to win this until we declare a War on Toilet Paper and Aluminum Foil??

Even nine months is some craphole for selling freaking glass tubes is too long.

[Tired of it all]

Excuse me Citizen, but the legality of selling glassware has always been quasi-legal, in that it was acceptible to sell such things as water pipes if a disclaimer was added to the item that it was not intended to be used to smoke marijuana. Pipes have been sold that way for decades now, only to be cracked down upon without so much as a peep from the lovely public. Moron.

[WLC]

Anon @ 3:52,

When I was stationed in Germany, most GIs used Coke cans.

[dude]

nuts "nine months IN some craphole. . ."

[Gene 6-Pack]

Why not defer any more drug arrests until we have all the terrorists in custody or underground?

[Anonymous]

>>The only thing Tommy has ever done was make
>>people laugh...

^As a technical matter, he also sold $100,000
>worth of bongs and pipes on the internet. I'm
>just saying, they didn't lock him up for making
>folks laugh. And it's only 9 months.

Come on, don't you think that many of the folks who bought this stuff were laughing more after using the merchandise than they would have without using it?

[Kevin Carson]

Tired of it all,

Yeah, and the fact that you can (sometimes sell it with a disclaimer), and that it can also be used to smoke legal substances, makes the definition of "drug paraphernalia" about as objective as "assault rifle."

The only test of whether something is "illegal" or not is waiting to see if you wind up in jail for nine months.

[mdd]

RC Dean: But then they'd put all the mom n' pop shops like Tommy's out of business...

7.62: Right you are, but it'd be nice if it didn't have to come to that...

I guess some days I just wander off the ranch and start asking crazy questions. But really, what do I expect in a country where a plant that grows naturally in most states is illegal, whereas a beverage brewed from a mixture of imported and domestic ingredients in a complicated and time consuming method in elaborate laboratory-like setting is legal. Of course provided you meet arbitrarily chosen age requirements.

*sigh*

[Codding Gooding]

You all sound like a bunch of whining dope smokers to me.

[Codding Gooding]

You all sound like a bunch of whining dope smokers to me.

[joe]

"I think the public has a low tolerance for breaking the law for any reason right now."

I think the public has a low tolerance for incompetant government officials who can't keep fucking uranium from coming through an airport, and turn in impotent fury on people who point that out.

Or maybe it's just me.

[Mo]

God made marijuana, man made laws.

Who are you gonna trust Codding?

[Citizen]

Moron nothing, you wanna fight this battle, Tired Of It All, knock yourself out. I don't think Chong was banking his 100 Gs as part of his political protest. Petition, sit in, whatever, but Chong doesn't get to cash in on his illegal activities and cry that it was an injust law to begin with.

[McClain]

Why isn't pot legal yet?
Maybe things have to get worse before they get better. Maybe the majority won't vote against prohibition until its effects become sufficiently hideous. Pointing out the ghastly consequences and absurd uselessness of the war on drugs hasn't worked yet. So I guess the only solution is to make the anti-drug laws so viciously draconian that even complacent, status-quo types will recoil in horror. Like the Tao Te Ching and Donald Rumsfeld say: sometimes you have to solve a problem by first making it bigger.

[Anonymous]

"Moron nothing, you wanna fight this battle, Tired Of It All, knock yourself out. I don't think Chong was banking his 100 Gs as part of his political protest. Petition, sit in, whatever, but Chong doesn't get to cash in on his illegal activities and cry that it was an injust law to begin with."

The law is unjust, REGARDLESS of whatever Chong's intentions were. Give me a damn break.

[WLC]

Actually, Codding, I've never tried the stuff myself. Maybe I *must* be homosexual simply because I think it would be nice to cut them some slack. At any rate, I once thought as you did.

[Gene Berkman]

The laws against sale of paraphernalia began in 1979 in Georgia. Texas passed a law as part of the War on Drugs headed by Ross Perot.
After Reagan was elected President, more states passed them.
When I was young, you could buy hookahs at shops that sold imports from India. Now a store can sell pipes, cigarette papers, etc if it has a tobacco license and sells them "for use with tobacco."
You can still have your store busted if you sell marijuana related merchandize, including grow books, along with the pipes. And you can be busted if you make a sale after a customer makes a drug reference.
It is a violation of free enterprise.

[one more joe]

Drugs are illegal because they are unsafe, but we arrest a person selling products that help remedy the situation...nice. I see a bit of an inconsistancy between this action and needle exchange programs or handing out condoms to minors, or encouraging prostitutes to use condoms in places where prostitution is illegal. (minors, as demonstrated in a couple recent news stories, can be arrested for having sex with other minors)

[Anonymous]

What a shame that the plane that flew into the Pentagon didn't go into the DEA building instead.

[objective dissent]

It's sadly portentious of the supposed libertarian party that this subject evokes such an emotional response.

Why not take more of stand on the principle of our right to harm ourselves by pointing out the direct and indirect assault on individual rights that everyone can relate to? Everything from people wanting to tax fatty foods to smoking bans.

Not that I care one way or another about Tommy Chong doing 9 months (yes, that is a short time) but when you look at the number of responses to this thread as opposed to the average, . . .

The response is extremely out of porportion.

[Thorley Winston]

(Please note: We are not advocating charges against the ABC reporters, just noting the irony.)

Okay I'll ask, why wouldn't you advocate charges against someone for smuggling uranium into the country? Are you saying it should be legal or that we should just make an exception if you're a reporter?

[objective dissent]

I think they are saying that it is ok for journalists to break the law as long as it's for a good reason.

Extremely subjective of course, but they are journalists.

[Larry]

Regarding the ABC reporters, it should be clear that the only way to effectively test security procedures is to have some white hats out there trying to breach that security.

That also must be combined with public disclosure of the results. The bureaucrats will argue that this is telling the terrorists where and how to strike, but that is just shortsighted and dumb. In the private sector the profit motive affects behavior, generally positively. In the government sector, public embarassment is one of the only ways to motivate bureaucracies.

[Mark]

One more Joe says: "Drugs are illegal because they are unsafe, but we arrest a person selling products that help remedy the situation..."

Huh? How do bongs "remedy the situation" vis a vis the safety or unsafety of drugs?

[Ray]

I'm not sure of the technical definition of "white hat" but why would it be ok for journalists to break the law and not you or me?

I used to be an aircraft mechanic and we would have these FAA guys show up at random and test our security and safety procedures. I don't see why journalists should be granted some special privileges; it's not like a journalism degree really qualifies a person for anything.

Perhaps a press pass is a default deputization of sorts.

The more I think about it, Cavanaugh's remark is incredibly condescending.

[Brian]

Mark--

By passing pot smoke through water before inhaling it, the smoke is cooled and some of the more noxious elements are removed. This *may* lessen the health hazzards of smoking pot. (At least, I think that's what he meant.)

Based on what I've seen, bongs just make it easier to smoke more, though, so I'm not sure that they qualify as a reliable means of harm reduction.

Nebulizers, on the other hand...

[Larry]

I agree that "journalist" is not and should not be a permission slip to break the law. I am just saying that one good thing journalists sometimes do when they uncover security problems is to publicize them.

If the FAA shows up to test security and safety, I would like their report published openly. It's really no different than the health department having restaurant ratings available to the public. In Los Angeles and other places they make the restaurants post their test results on the restaurant door. Why not have airports post their security "grades" on the front door?

[Ray]

I don't know how publicly available the violations were but I do know that the offenders were fined out the wazoo!

It was pretty effective inasmuch as it was applied.

What I saw, and this is anecdotal, but we were scrutinized and went through security checks to the point of being ridiculous while Ahmed could buy a one way ticket and carry any number of questionable items on board the plane.

Bascially they coddled the litigious prone public while seducing themselves into a delusion of security by applying extra scrutiny to those least likely to make a stink.

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile Ken Lay walks the streets a free man. . .

[Mark S.]

That's funny, the local chain of porn shops that run spots on all the Milwaukee hard-rock stations advirtise "glass pipes." I guess the disclaimer that they are to be use for "legal tobacco use only" keeps the narcs off of them?

[Kevin Carson]

Gene:

Perot--that figures. Back when he was in charge of a drug task force, he actually cordoning off entire urban neighborhoods and doing warrantless house-to-house searches. It's a good thing that crazy little bastard wasn't elected (and he might well have been had he announced his surprise write-in candidacy for the DEMOCRATIC nomination in 1992); I doubt he would have left office of his own free will.

[Pete Guither]

Mark S.
You can still legally buy all sorts of paraphernalia in many places. It's a legal quagmire, with federal laws against paraphernalia often stronger than state or local laws.

We had a store in central Illinois that sold pipes with disclaimers (for tobacco use only) and they had the local police come in and owners asked police to tell them if they were doing anything illegal. Local police were fine with it, but later the DEA came in and seized their goods.

The businesses that were targeted in Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter were large enough to attract federal attention, combined with a local prosecutor in the right location ready to push for federal involvement.

Interestingly, some of the places that made glass pipes and weren't busted have gotten scared, so a few of them have switched to manufacturing glass dildos.

There's a few more background links here as well if you're interested.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Funny, this kind of news makes me want to take another drink.

In my day I've smoked dope in everything from bamboo to coke cans to salt shakers. I just hope the dopers don't start making pipes out of shoes, it'll hurt to have to walk around this town (Phoenix) barefoot, I tell you.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Joe: I appreciate your objective spirit, but perhaps the same can be said of the Nazi party. I'm sure they did some "good" things, but the reason they existed was terribly flawed (to say the least). DEA exists because of the drug war. I am also confident that many of our "drug warriors" don't differentiate between peaceful users (who happen to be American citizens) and the few evil thugs who exploit the situation that the drug war creates.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Ken: Solidarity!

[joe]

Mr. NG,

Remember the Godfather series? Before narcotics, it was labor rackets, gambling, prostitution, alcohol, etc etc etc. And no matter what the game was, ratta-tat-tat, everybody's dead.

Screw those people.

[James Merritt]

Chong's plea was "guilty." From where I sit, it looks like he wants to be the Pot War's Gandhi or Nelson Mandela. He'll spend 9 months accumulating material for his post-slammer comedy act, and perhaps even a movie. He'll find a way to make people -- not just stoners but Joe Sixpack and Mary Mainstreet -- laugh at the absurdity, hypocrisy, waste, and immorality of the Drug War, but maybe cry too. They'll listen to him and believe what he has to say because he'll have willingly done the time for a crime that shouldn't exist. He will have the moral authority that the Drug Warriors can only fraudulently claim. I'll be interested to see what happens next.

[Pete Guither]

NORML has an easy way to write Congress about this issue.

[joe]

I would guess, oj, that this topic gets more posts than fat taxes because spending nine months of your life in a cage is a little more important than paying an extra dime for cheetos.

[xray]

All you pretend libertarians who think Tommy should be doing his nine months can make out your cheques to the IRS right now, please.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

James: You make some excellent observations. Perhaps Chong can make hay out of this, and good for him. I find it interesting how this mirrors his role in "Half-Baked".

Speaking for myself, this indeed pisses me off enough to get me off my ass and support our friends at NORML.

Are the code names Operation Pipe Dreams and Headhunter for real? DEA can go to hell.

[joe]

To be fair, most of what the DEA does is standard anti-organized crime activities. But this shit gets most of the press.

And I know that the organized crime only exists because of prohibition. That doesn't make it wrong to arrest the thugs.

[Ken]

Mr. Nice Guy,

I wrote checks to MPP and Drug Policy Alliance yesterday after reading this article.

[James Merritt]

I have been doing some additional reading on this story, including this piece from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

If reports of Chong's contrition and request for leniency at his sentencing are true, perhaps my initial take on what's coming is all wrong. I guess we'll see.

[Anonymous]

USA, the land of the not-quite-as-free-as-we-make-ourselves-out-to-be.

Oh well, just one more in a long line of reasons to stay north of the border.

[arjay]

Kevin Carson

I remember Perot proposing door to door searches in '92 to confiscate guns and thinking, wow Clinton and Bush may not understand the Bill of Rights but this little Bozo doesn't even know it exists.

I don't recall him saying it with respect to drugs, but I'm not surprised.

[arjay]

Mr Nice Guy & Ken

I know a lot more of my support is going to go to NORML & MPP since the ACLU & Amnesty International are AWOL in the War on the War on Drugs. I'll still support AI but the ACLU seems to have decided to become a branch of the Democrap party.

[arjay]

joe

Sorry, but the DEA is superfluous to any pursuit of "thugs". They exist only to persecute heretics who think it's OK to self-medicate or sell the products needed to self-medicate.

This strikes me as "establishment of religion" every bit as much as posting the decalogue in some podunk courthouse.