Tommy Chong's Bongs - A stoner icon goes to jail.
Greg Beato | May 2004 Print Edition
http://www.reason.com/news/show/29137.htmlIs U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan the meanest movie critic in the country? Before her negative review of the Extreme Associates adult video catalog, she gave a thumbs-down to actor/comedian/stoner icon Tommy Chong for his role in the operation of Nice Dreams Enterprises, a family business that manufactured and distributed bongs, urinalysis kits, and related products.
Chong's home was raided in February 2003 as part of the Justice Department's nationwide crackdown against 55 companies and individuals who, according to a rarely enforced federal law, were illegally selling drug paraphernalia over the Internet. In May 2003, Chong pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to distribute paraphernalia, and on October 8, 2003, he started serving a nine-month sentence at Taft Correctional Institution, a privately run federal prison in central California. Chong also received a $20,000 fine and forfeited $103,000; when he's released in July 2004 he'll be on probation for one year.
"He wasn't the biggest supplier. He was a relatively new player," Buchanan said at the time of Chong's sentencing. "But he had the ability to market products like no other."
Thanks to quotes like that, and the fact that Chong received a harsher sentence than anyone else who was caught in the crackdown, many people have taken up his cause, with Web sites like freetommychong.org charging that the 65-year-old comedian is being "unfairly targeted for prosecution because of his celebrity status."
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