Lit_Match

Chong, back from the joint
05-18-07|The Herald-Tribune|BY BILLY COX

Comedian Tommy Chong's last performance in Sarasota coincided with the stunning announcement that he was being indicted by the Justice Department on charges of manufacturing and distributing drug paraphernalia.

"He opened every show by saying, 'Everything you hear from this point on is fictitious in nature,'" recalls McCurdy's Comedy Theatre owner Les McCurdy, who began booking the taller half of the iconic Cheech and Chong stoner-comic duo in the 1990s.

FBI agents raided Chong's Los Angeles home for bongs and water pipes in February 2003 as part of a sting operation that produced 55 defendants. But the mellow marijuana maven was the only first-time offender who pulled prison time as a result.

Chong returns to McCurdy's today through Sunday, appearing no worse for wear.

"Being in jail is humiliating," he cautions by phone from his home in California. "Especially when you've done nothing wrong. It's humiliating for you, for your family, for everybody."

On the other hand, the Canadian-born actor/musician's trial and incarceration became the focus of an award-winning documentary, "a/k/a Tommy Chong." Entertainers and activists teed off on America's marijuana laws, the defendant became the author of "The I Chong: Meditations From the Joint," and he landed a role in "That '70s Show" after his release.

If the Justice Department's aim was to shut him up, the mission has clearly not succeeded. Although Chong doesn't peddle bongs anymore, his political ordeal may have given him more gravitas than anything he accomplished in entertainment.

"It's like everything else that's backfired on this administration," says Chong, whose albums and films with Cheech Marin became subculture classics in the '70s and '80s.

"When you start believing in your own lies, you're in big trouble, man, and these guys live in an alternative universe."

Chong's still awaiting news bulletins about the world's first fatal marijuana overdose, even as the Centers for Disease Control reported in February that prescription drug fatalities are the second leading cause of unintentional deaths in the United States. He contends that America's war on pot bumbles along because of some deep lobbying pockets.

"The chemical companies, the breweries, the pharmaceuticals, the tobacco companies -- they're all lined up against (legalization) because they can't compete with it," he says.

And at age 68, Tommy Chong says it's not too late to cultivate his own green thumb, thanks to prison. Among the many things he studied during his nine-month sentence was horticulture. "Seriously, man, I learned how to grow grass," he says. "I mean literally -- grass."