CHONG TAKES POT SHOTS AT GRASS LAWS

Tommy Chong's first joint, the one that was supposed to turn him into a
homicidal maniac, was handed to him in Calgary in 1957 by a Chinese bass
player.

It was a life-changing experience, not least because he and partner Cheech
Marin would one day earn many millions of dollars with pot-comedy albums
and movies such as Up In Smoke.

"I was 17 years old," Chong says over the phone from his home in Pacific
Palisades, Calif., where, he says, "I live two blocks away from Steven
Spielberg. There's all kinds of famous people on this street. And they all
smoke pot."

Back to 1950s Alberta.

"This Chinese blues guy, a bass player named Mah ... Eddie Mah? I can't
remember. He gave me my first joint and my first Lenny Bruce record.

"I kept that one joint. It lasted me a long time. I'd take a few tokes and
put it out. It really changed my life. I quit school right away and decided
I wanted to be a blues musician."

Chong says he used to hang out at a little jazz club in Calgary called the
Flat Five, and continued his blues education in Vancouver.

But marijuana wouldn't become his source of income for years, even after he
ditched guitar playing for improv comedy with his own Vancouver-based
troupe CityWorks. It was in "Van" that he met a comic named Richard
"Cheech" Marin.

"We started a group together, and played strip clubs. Then we moved to L.A.
and one night we played near Cheech's hometown in the San Fernando Valley.
And we weren't going over.

"And I said 'You're from here, man, there must be some kind of character we
can pull out!' And he started doing the 'Low-rider' and I started doing
'The Stoner,' who became our characters Pedro and Man."

Cheech and Chong split in 1984. Cheech opted for a straight acting career,
Chong for standup comedy. Now they're back together, writing another movie.
And after nearly 50 years of pot smoking, Chong has been slapped with his
first felony charge -- using the mail for illegal purposes.

In a nationwide bust of people selling drug paraphernalia over the
Internet, Drug Enforcement Agency officers broke into Chong's house and a
factory in Gardenia, Calif., where he and one of his sons were making and
selling Tommy Chong Glass Water Bongs.

"It was 5:30 in the morning, the SWAT team and helicopters. They came
busting in with the guns drawn, yelling 'Don't move!' "

Chong appears ready to plea bargain, "and I've been told if I don't cause a
spectacle, I'll get off with a slap on the wrist.

"Pot laws are racist," he says. "They're used to provide an excuse to
arrest blacks, and take away their vote because in the U.S. once you've
been convicted of a felony, you can't vote.

"The paraphernalia law is even worse. They (the studios) put out lunchboxes
with my face on showing me smoking a joint, from the movie Up In Smoke, and
that's legal. ... The law is (expletive)."