TOMMY CHONG'S NEW JOINT

Serving nine months in federal prison for putting his face on a bong, one
of America's most beloved comics contemplates the war on stoners,
thoughtcrime and reuniting with Cheech.

The joke, of course, is that this is Sgt. Stadanko's revenge. The
arch-nemesis of every Cheech & Chong film, actor Stacey Keach seemed
like he'd play the greasy, bumbling narc forever, but now U.S.
Attorney General and religious jihadist John Ashcroft has taken over
the role, and he's not playing it for laughs.

Sitting in the visitation area inside Taft Correctional Institution, a
privately run federal prison plunked in the Iraq-like oilfields of
California's Central Valley, Tommy Chong found out the hard way that
Ashcroft's Department of Justice is now busting thoughtcrime. The
65-year-old writer and director of some of America's most beloved
comedies is astonished to find that his movies, in part, earned him
nine months in the federal pen.

"They came after me because of the movies, Up in Smoke, Cheech &
Chong, and because of my act since 1968," says Chong. "They took my
character to be my real persona."

Is that your real persona? I have to ask.

"No," Chong chuckles. "It's a character. It's like the Furry Freak
Bros. Cheech & Chong are like comic-strip characters. Everybody knows
that the real Cheech isn't the Cheech from Up in Smoke, and the real
Tommy Chong isn't the Tommy Chong from the 'Hey man' dude.

"But I was selling bongs with my picture on 'em. And they said, 'Well,
this is Tommy Chong.' But I was like Christopher Reeve doing a
Superman promotion. [U.S. Attorneys] never saw it that way. And they
wanted to make an example of me. Really, what they wanted to do was to
shut down the whole culture."

Clearly, Chong's playing both sides. He's not the headbanded,
acid-guitar-wielding ur-stoner from the movies, but he is sometimes
indistinguishable from that character, and he has embraced that image
in public. Just like a lot of other performers. Arnold Schwarzenegger,
for example, used quotes from his ultra-violent Terminator movies,
like "Hasta la vista, baby," when campaigning for governor. Chong was
right to assume that this was not a crime.

Until now. The current U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), unlike any in
the last 30 years, has changed the rules. Since 9/11, the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has run ads equating
marijuana use with supporting terrorism, and the DOJ has taken that
outrageous pronouncement to the next level, equating glassware sales
with drug dealing.

On Feb. 24, federal agents launched two simultaneous national sweeps
for purveyors of drug paraphernalia, Operation Pipe Dreams out of the
U.S. Attorney's office in western Pennsylvania, and Operation
Headhunter out of the Northern District of Iowa. Under an apparently
little-used 1980s federal law, they scooped up umpteen thousand bongs,
pipes, roach clips and even rolling papers from mail-order and
Internet suppliers whose shipments crossed state lines. One of those
was the Gardena, Calif., business run by Chong's son Paris, called
Nice Dreams Enterprises, doing business as Tommy Chong Glass.

Fifty-five individuals and companies were busted across the country
that day. A few others got prison time. The one who got the longest
sentence was Tommy Chong. He reported to prison on Oct. 8, and he'll
be there until July 2004. A judge recently rejected requests for home
detention or early release.

"Tommy's the only one that's gotten a federal sentence," says Allen
St. Pierre, spokesperson for the National Organization to Reform
Marijuana Laws, or NORML. "He had no prior arrests. He was no flight
risk. He is a cultural icon and a taxpayer, probably higher than most
of us. And certainly did not fit the basic criteria of who should go
to jail for paraphernalia."

But there's one criterion he fit just too neatly. Every burnout in
America would hear about it and get scared.

"[Chong] wasn't the biggest supplier. He was a relatively new player.
But he had the ability to market products like no other," said U.S.
Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan at Chong's sentencing.

"They went after Tommy Chong because he was just what they needed,"
says St. Pierre. "If you have to think of one individual that would
represent the government's efforts to enforce prohibition, or a
representative of the negative stereotype, then, out of a country of
almost 300 million Americans, there's really only about three or four
people who fit that bill: Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson and Tommy
Chong."

Dave's Not Here, Man

If only life really were like the movies. Then Chong and some of the
inmates would fashion several pairs of gargantuan rave pants out of
sweetleaf and, during a prison foam party featuring a jail appearance
by, say, Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs, escape in a paisley Beetle full of
girls in fuzzy bikini tops, dank smoke pouring out all four windows.
Leaving Stadanko blissed-out in the center of the cafeteria dance
floor, having found his new high.

Instead, Chong's new reality is a lot more like some crappy, badly
soundtracked episode of Cops.

The investigation into Nice Dreams Enterprises was months in the
making, as agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
posing as a head shop in Beaver Falls, Penn., just northwest of
Pittsburgh, tried to order glassware from Nice Dreams.

"The reason they didn't indict me until later is because our company
wouldn't send the order to Pennsylvania," says Chong. The company was
wary of the U.S. Attorney's office in the area, which is one of the
country's most conservative. "They faked like they were a head shop,
saying, 'C'mon, man, your stuff's selling so great, we need $6,000
worth.' I heard the tape where they [Nice Dreams] turned 'em down.'

But, eventually, the order was filled. The federal paraphernalia law
makes it illegal to transport across state lines any device for the
use of illicit drugs. Such laws were common at the state and municipal
level in the 1980s, but a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court ruling made a
somewhat ambiguous federal law available to DOJ prosecutors.

"The decision was called 'Iowa vs. Poster-N-Things,'" says NORML's St.
Pierre. "It basically boils down to this. What would a reasonable
person think the product is going to be used for? If you're a
prosecutor, and you're gonna bring charges on paraphernalia, you would
want to bring forward all of the cultural affectations that the
products in question are being sold in."

Which means that bongs for sale in a store might not be protected by
California law, which requires they be clearly marked "For Tobacco Use
Only." According to the Supreme Court, if there are High Times
magazines also for sale, stickers and T-shirts with pot leaves on
them, even NORML pamphlets on the countertop, this might indicate that
the devices are to be used with marijuana.

Nice Dreams, being an interstate glassware seller by mail and
Internet, was guilty by association with its own products. The company
sold Tommy Chong urinalysis kits to test for THC, the psychoactive
ingredient in pot, a Tommy Chong Get Clean shampoo and Tommy Chong
Urine Luck, a urine-sample additive that would guarantee a clean test
for marijuana. Plus, of course, stuff with pot leaves and Tommy's face
on it. Which was taken as evidence that this stuff was meant for The
Chronic.

"So you get that before a jury of 12 reasonable people," adds St.
Pierre, "and the reasonable person, more often than not, says, 'No, I
think that that bong with the big marijuana leaf on it, sold in that
place with all these other things around it, with drug testing kits
and stuff, that was probably not for tobacco.'"

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary McKeen Houghton pointed out at the trial
that almost a pound of marijuana was seized at Chong's house-but he
was never prosecuted for possession. They had a bigger target in mind.
The glassware itself-and, strangely, only glass bongs and pipes were
seized, not plastic, bamboo or any other thing-has now been
criminalized. It's not about what consumers do with it; it's what they
might do with it. That is what's known as a thoughtcrime, a crime that
never actually occurs.

As in George Orwell's book 1984, thoughtcrime has now become
dangerous. On Feb 24, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) kicked at the door of Tommy Chong's home at 5:30
a.m., automatic weapons drawn, red laser sights flashing down the
darkened halls. Chong and his wife, Shelby, who is also a comedian,
were asleep.

"Oh, it was a full-on raid," says Chong. "Helicopters, them bangin' on
the door. They come in with loaded automatic weapons, flak jackets,
helmets, visors, about 20 agents. They bust in the house. They took
all my cash, took out my computers, and they took all the glass bongs
they could find."

Down in Gardena at the Nice Dreams plant, a similar raid took place,
though it was more civilized. Agents simply walked in and carted away
all the glassware, computers and business records.

"I thought it was a joke," Chong says. "I thought they had the wrong
house. You hear about these guys coming to the wrong house all the
time. And then when I found out about the bongs, I was really mad,
because my son Paris had just started to make money with the company.
I was just outraged."

Sister Mary Elephant

Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of
Pennsylvania, is also playing both sides of Chong's publicity. On the
press and on the Internet. Comics were among the first to read the
writing on the wall. Jay Leno, no friend of the marijuana movement,
slammed the government in a monologue, as did Jon Stewart. Lane, an
ice-rink marketing director, co-wrote a still-unsold script with Chong
about a dope-smoking hockey team, subtly titled Biff Spliff and the
Potheads. In November, Lane organized the Free Tommy Chong Brigade to
march in Pasadena's annual Doo-Dah Parade, where, he says, he received
"a tremendous ovation."

"I think [Chong's arrest] galvanizes the movement, if anything," Lane
adds.

"It definitely has a chilling effect," counters NORML's St. Pierre.
"High Times magazine would be a very good example. They started to
lose a very high percentage of their ad base immediately based on
that. So that has an immediate chilling effect on a magazine that, in
essence, is the First Amendment vehicle for the drug-policy movement.
Paraphernalia is a billion-dollar industry."

Chong is one of them who lost a lot of money selling bongs. The
company was still $500,000 in the hole on paper, he says, and he
didn't recoup. But his newfound notoriety is creating the ultimate
springboard back into Cheech & Chong.

"It all helps," he says. "I'm getting so much fan mail here that I'm
going to have to hire somebody to help me answer it. Mail call here is
like two sacks, one for me and one for the rest of the people."

Before he went to prison, Chong was already writing a book, The Cheech
& Chong Story. Now he's definitely going to write up material about
going to prison-and the stories he's heard from other inmates. "Oh,
absolutely! I'm definitely writing it. But I'm not going to do
anything radical until I'm out of here," he says. "And I got a year of
probation to look forward to."

That's time he's going to use for introspection, for his
drug-education classes ("I teach them more than they teach me"), for
building sculpture and for savoring his new relationship to his old
buddy Cheech. Which already seems to be off on the right foot. "They
said on the Internet that part of the reason I got a sentence is
because I never gave anybody up, you know?" he deadpans. "But I woulda
gave up Cheech in a minute! [Long laugh.] I woulda told on him, man!
And I know everything about him! And I still will if they'd give me
some time off!"