Mr. Chong seems like a man totally at peace with himself. I am glad he has his freedom back.

I love how he referred to his time on That 70's Show not as an actor, but as if he lived the experience of Point Place.

This thread may be a case for medicinal use of pot, and lots of it.

Do you mean freely available drugs, like caffeine?

Or legal but regulated drugs, like nicotine and alcohol?

Or prescription drugs?

Or just drugs you don't use?

I would vote for Tommy Chong for President without hesitation. The man deserves some sort of Nobel Prize.

And also, it really gets on my nerves that the Bush family has spawned so many homocidal maniacs and drug users but not one of them will ever face prison time. Does anybody doubt that George W. was hitting the bong hard in the 70's and 80's? And his crackhead daughters are probably on the pipe right now.

THAT RIGHT THERE IS WHAT THEY CALL "JUSTICE" IN THIS HERE WORLD.

Life.

i

It's that much less competition for the rest of us.

"Really, marijuana is a medicine, and to come right out and legalize it, to say to world, "Hey, kill yourself," I don't really subscribe to that."

A reminder that under US political pressure the World Health Organization supressed a report (1) confirming that marijuana is significantly safer than either alcohol or tobacco. Combined with it's proven medical uses and the increased violence and crime linked with it's illegal sale, these shrill "Drugs are bad" hypocrites are really looking dumber than a guy who just smoked an ounce of chronic.

Reuters reports (2) from Amsterdam (unpublished in any American newspaper??) show:

"15.6 percent of Dutch people aged 12 and over had used or tried cannabis, versus a U.S. figure of 32.9 percent."

Only money and sheer stupidity can make Americans piss on the truth like this, what I want to know is where the money goes... Does the government think it would make more money from police bribes than from taxing it's legal sale? Is it fear of South America actually having an economy? Theories anyone?

1: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/030/who-report.shtml

2: http://www.marijuananews.com/marijuananews/cowan/reuters_carried_dutch_drug_use_c.htm

that this is a really shallow and incoherent interview?

Maybe that should tell you something.

For selling bongs..? What kind of mean-spirited vendetta was this..??

It reminds me why I never needed to even try the stuff to know why they call it "wacky weed" and "dope." All the so-called stereotypes are right here in full view for lucid people to read and laugh at. As if Tommy Chong's "interview" wasn't proof enough.

Why don't you not worry about it, buddy?

Unless you're being paid by the DEA to post anti-marijuana propaganda here.

Anyway, you keep killing your brain with beer, and we'll talk in a few years.

I, for one, find it scary as hell that a US attorney can blackmail someone into prision so they can put a notch in their belt/climb their career ladder. I'd expect this from the Soviets in order to silence a dissident, but in America? Who one earth was safer with Tommy Chong in prision? Was anyone deterred, even a little bit, from lighting up a J? I doubt it.

If I ever have the opportunity to serve on a criminal jury, I will not, no matter the evidence, convict on a non-violent drug offense. I ask everyone to do the same.

The Bush administration refuses to look at reason, let alone science and most politicians are too chickenshit to take a stand. There is too much money and too many special interests involved to trust those in power to change the laws to the detriment of those who get the money and those whose interests are served.

Some may dismiss this argument, but I'd bet you would all want me on your jury when you get busted for smoking on your back porch.

That Salon's just doing its job. Part of its trade is celebrity culture and like it or not, Tommy Chong's a celebrity. He's a little boring; big deal (I think pot's fine, but there's only so much one can say about it). He's got a darned sight more to say than Salon stalwarts like Anne Lamott or Ayelet Waldman or Rebecca Traister.

Now, on to the asshole: if you can't handle pot, Drugs Are Bad M'Kay, that's your problem. Nobody's forcing you to do dope or read Patty Schwarz's admittedly tiresome posts on dope as wonderdrug. Save the infantilization for your fellow Republicans.

Chong has lazy superficial Hollywood-type mind, he doesn't keep up with the science, he's not really well informed. He walks around with his stunningly beautiful trophy wife and everyone treats him like a hero, while he comes out and stabs them in the back!

There are a lot of other people you should be interviewing if you want to do a pot story that will rattle the Bush administration's nerves.

Why don't you interview Dr. Donald Tashkin from the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, who discovered that smoking pot does not cause emphysema or lung cancer, thanks to the unique anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic properties of cannabinoids.

Or you could interview Dr. Manuel Guzman of Universidad Complutense in Madrid, about how the active ingredients in marijuana kill or shrink eleven different tyes of cancerous tumors.

Ask him whether he thinks marijuana users get more cancer or less cancer than people who dont use marijuana.

So far a population study in Britain has shown that people with a past history of marijuana use have a 20% less chance of getting lymphoma than people without such a history. And lymphoma is one of those cancers on Guzman's list.

Or you could interview those guys in Italy who are doing the research into how cannabinoids manage to kill breast cancer cells without killing normal cells.

All of that stuff is way the hell more interesting than Tommy Chong.

Because it's science, not some comedian looking to make another buck by making fun of his own people.

That's the thing about pot -- people want it ghettoized in the comedy section, the lifestyle section or the crime section.

Well, it's time to let marijuana into the science section of the newspaper, dammit.

Especially the part where they try to understand cancer, what makes it spread, and what makes it shrink.