NEWSFLASH: Tommy Chong Freed!
by Ellen Komp
www.veryimportantpotheads.com

Tommy Chong appeared on NBC Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday, July 9, fresh from his release from prison after serving 9 months at Taft Correctional Facility in Bakersfield, California on charges of selling paraphernalia over the internet.

In his monologue, Leno announced, "Tommy Chong is here. He flew in on the red eye." Next he said that he felt Chong had been unjustly imprisoned. "In Hollywood, you sell a bong, you go to jail, you kill your wife, so what [he gestured]."

Looking relaxed and healthy, the health-conscious Chong, 66, said it was good to be out and gave a greeting to his fellow Taft inmates, who he called some of the funniest guys he'd ever met. When asked how prison conditions were, Chong joked, "It was hell, man, one day I had to wait two hours for a tennis court," then said more seriously that the aim of the prison experience seems to be to humiliate the inmate.

Leno asked how Chong had been busted, and Tommy replied his company sold bongs to a fake "head shop" in Pennsylvania that was a DEA front. "But isn't that entrapment?" Jay asked. "Hey, this is America," replied Chong. It was also revealed during the interview that Chong pleaded guilty so that charges would not be filed against his wife and son. Chong was the only one of 55 people rounded up during "Operation Pipe Dreams" who served time.

Jay asked why Chong's bongs were deemed illegal when such items are available for purchase on Santa Monica Blvd. in LA. "I guess because they had my picture on it," joked Chong, who is famous for portraying a pothead in his many successful Cheech and Chong movies. Chong said when police came to his door, they asked if he had pot. "Of course I do. I'm Tommy Chong," was the reply. However, Chong had no arrest record whatsoever until that day.

And the end of the two-segment interview, Leno asked Chong whether or not his comedy partner Cheech Marin had visited him in prison. "He came once, but that was always Cheech's problem," said Chong, and at that point Cheech appeared on stage. The pair announced they are working on a new film, to the cheers of the already receptive audience.

Look for an interview with Chong in an upcoming GQ magazine.

What Can I Do To Help?
There are three things you can do right now that will greatly help NORML fight bad paraphernalia laws:

1.) Join Or Donate to NORML
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We need your help so we can stop the arrests. So you can buy a pipe or an ounce, pay your sales tax, and be left alone. So suffering patients will have access to a drug that is legal in other countries because it relieves pain when nothing else works.

And, so we can offer hope to thousands now in jail, like Tommy Chong.

Don't you agree that now is the time to lend your voice of opposition against the government's policy of arresting and jailing adults, including sick and dying medical patients, who use marijuana responsibly?

Please support NORML's long-standing law reform work.

Thanks in advance,

Keith Stroup, Esq.
Founder and Executive Director

p.s. Be it for principle or product, please support NORML's important advocacy work.