TOMMY CHONG A CASUALTY OF WAR ON DRUGS

Comedian Tommy Chong has felt the sting of the Bush administration's
war on all things related to marijuana. For Chong, the nightmare
began in February 2003, when police helicopters and a bunch of
agents with dogs launched an early-morning raid on his suburban Los
Angeles home.

In the acclaimed documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong, Chong says the cops
first told him he wasn't under arrest. In fact, they were busting
his Internet bong-selling business as part of a massive U.S.
government crackdown called Operation Pipe Dreams. After U.S. drug
agents tricked staff at the family company into shipping
bongs illegally to Pennsylvania, Chong pleaded guilty to conspiring
to distribute drug paraphernalia in order to spare his son and wife
from prosecution. He was sentenced to nine months in jail on the
second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

"The ultimate aim was to bring me down," Chong says in the film,
which explores how U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan tried to link
Chong's film and comedy work to drug abuse in America. That
attracted outrage from civil libertarians, who claimed this violated
Chong's constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The case turned Chong into a symbol of the absurdity of the war on
drugs. In a recent interview with Straight contributor Guy
MacPherson, Chong said that he was operating in a "gray area, much
like Marc Emery is now", because of an archaic law. Chong noted that
Barack Obama's vice-presidential candidate, Joe Biden, wrote the law
that banned shipping drug paraphernalia through the mail. Despite
this, Chong expressed optimism that he will clear his record as a
result of the U.S. presidential election.

"The first thing I'm gonna do when Obama gets sworn in is get my
record expunged -- my felony conviction," Chong said. "There's a way
to do it. What you do [is] change your plea from guilty to innocent,
and if they accept the pleaaE&then they just wipe it off and say,
'Okay, you're no longer a felon.' "

Vancouver pot-seed vendor Emery, on the other hand, isn't feeling
nearly as optimistic about Obama's election. That's because Obama
appears set to appoint Eric Holder as attorney general. Holder, like
Biden, has been a supporter of the war on drugs and also served as
deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.

During the first three years of the Clinton administration, 1.5
million Americans were arrested on marijuana charges. By 1999, that
increased to 4.2 million. "It was the largest increase ever, and
this guy was the deputy attorney general at the time," Emery said.

He and his two Vancouver coaccused, Michelle Rainey and Greg
Williams, face charges of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana,
conspiracy to sell seeds, and conspiracy to launder money, in an
indictment filed in Seattle in 2005. Emery said the U.S. government
is claiming that by sending seeds to U.S. citizens, he entered into
a conspiracy with the buyers to grow marijuana. "On [The] Lou Dobbs
[Show], for example -- we have the footage -- they said I was the
largest producer of marijuana in the history of the U.S. justice
system," he said. "They're attributing me with 1.1 million pounds of
marijuana -- 100,000 pounds a year."

As for the money-laundering charge, Emery alleged that profits went
to charities and activist groups. "So the money-laundering is
actually all of the political stuff I did that I'm kind of proud
of," he quipped.

The extradition hearing is scheduled to start next June in B.C.
Supreme Court. Emery claimed that MPs could pass a resolution
ordering Attorney General Rob Nicholson not to extradite the trio.
Emery emphasized that under the Extradition Act, Nicholson can
intervene in the process at any time and state that Canada will not
send him to the United States. "What I would recommend is they
charge me in Canada with what they want to charge in the United
States, and we'll see what a judge here thinks about that," Emery said.