On September 11, 2003, Tommy Chong went to prison. 25 years after the world giggled at his antics in Up In Smoke with his partner Cheech, a jail term was sobering for the man who was at the time playing the older pothead on That 70’s Show.
Tommy Chong had simply done what any father would do – help his son start a business. However, that business created some of the world’s most beautiful glass pipes. You can still buy cheap rolling papers at Walmart, but on the day the Chong residence was raided, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced “This illegal, billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law enforcement.”
Nearing the end of his sentence at the Taft Correctional Facility, we sat at a grey plastic picnic table and I tried to get at the truth. One thing is certain, though, Tommy Chong is now more free a man than ever.
Jeffrey Goldsmith: You wrote to me that the universe does not make mistakes. So, why are you here?
Tommy Chong: I’ve talked the talk for years, but this is the first chance I’ve had to walk the walk. The universe doesn’t make mistakes. That’s I Ching philosophy. The reason humans make mistakes is because they haven’t learned from their mistakes.
Q: Was it a mistake to fund your son’s glass pipe business?
A: No, We were testing the entrepreneur waters, and promoting a product I believe in, although bongs apparently create respiratory problems. The best way to do pot, I heard, is to dip it in honey and eat a little, or to make butter and spread it on toast.
Q: Have you found something to replace marijuana in here?
A: This is the best place to do religious exploration. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Joel Goldsmith. I was turned on to him very spiritually in 1982. Then I got into the American Indian Sweat Lodge every Saturday, here.
Q: Cool. What do you experience in the sweat lodge?
A: We do the pipe ceremony first. Smoke attracts good spirits and dispels bad spirits. We smudge everything with sage, then we do a huge bon fire. We heat up the rocks, then we cover up the entrance and splash water on the rocks. It makes it very hot in there, so you can’t sit with your ego. The only way you can sit through the pain is to relax. Then the sweat leaders start singing with the drums and we do ancient Lakota chants. We start around 9AM and we end around 1:30, then we go about our business.
Q: Is this why you don’t seem to resent being locked up?
A: Well, there was one more step in my evolution. I was sent a book called the I Ching. The first thing it says is that you’re doing a reunion with a partner. And the reunion’s going to be great. The I Ching told me to quit doing the “injustice of it all” bit. That’s as bad as jealousy, envy and hate. As soon as I put that aside, my state was beautiful.
Q: You’re using this as a…
A: Spiritual retreat.
Q: You’re happy.
A: I’m tan. Life is so easy here! At 2 in the afternoon, I work in the kitchen or the compound sweeping up cigarettes.
Q: It’s like sweeping the gravel at a Zen monastery. So, what’s your plan when you get out?
A: Go back on the road with my wife doing stand up. I was going to do a show here, but this place is run by the Department of Justice.
Q: Speaking of which, PeopleVAshcroft.org says that 2,000 law enforcement officials contributed to busting you. Think it reduced cannabis consumption?
A: They don’t want to reduce cannabis.
Q: Then what was John Ashcroft’s point if he indeed targeted you?
A: One, take an antiwar vocal celebrity off the street. Two, perpetuate the propaganda about marijuana. Three, to pose for the Right Wing zealots that own him. And to divert attention. They’re raping the environment, but they’re putting potheads in jail who are so un-American that they’re against the American way of life, which is invading other countries.
Q: So, why didn’t you fight this? Why did you plead guilty?
A: Because they threatened my son. They threatened my wife. And they keep their threats. If they say they’re going to give you three years, they give you three years.
Q: It sounds like you could become an activist about this, as well.
A: Totally, but who’s going to stop them from coming up with a witness saying I sold a ton of marijuana to them?
Q: In the letter you sent me, you said 50% of the inmates shouldn’t be in here. Give me an example.
A: They don’t want me using his name, but there’s a doctor, a decorated veteran. He made a lot of money during the 60s and 70s, then invested in a tax shelter that subsequently was declared illegal. His attorneys stole from him, and to cover up their thievery they turned him in. It’s an injustice system. He’s 78 now. They refuse to give anybody house arrest unless you’re Rush Limbaugh.
Q: Rush Limbaugh had his Oxicontin habit.
A: Oh, yeah. Rush Limbaugh once told everybody that drug dealers should be taken out and executed like they do in China.
Q: I read that Bush allegedly did cocaine in the 70s. Didn’t one of his daughters pop pills and get arrested?
A: Go back to Gerald Ford’s wife, Betty. Kennedy was a freak, legal because a doctor gave it to him in a syringe, but it was speed. Methamphetamine is the biggest scourge in America today.
Q: Have you ever done crystal?
A: No, I classify meth and coke and heroin as bad karma drugs. Opium, that’s my retirement plan. When I get to the point where I have to be led around, I want to go into those dreams.
Q: Someone recently reminded me that marijuana leads to harder drugs. Does it?
A: Sure, you’re not getting the same kick off of marijuana that you get off the heroin. Alcohol probably leads to heavier drugs, because with alcohol you lose your inhibitions. Marijuana leads to star athletes winding down after a hard game.
Q: Lower sperm count, social inhibitions, paranoia?
A: Has that been proven? Every clinical test I’ve ever read said they didn’t find any of that. Nixon had brilliant people do a report on marijuana and they found that it should be made legal.
Q: Nixon called Timothy Leary the most dangerous man in America.
A: Nixon took the report and threw it in the garbage. But it’s still on record. They’ve got a drug counselor here. Their own book they says marijuana is a hard drug to classify. Yet, there are people doing 20 years in jail for growing it.
Q: So why is it illegal?
A: To fund the war on drugs. To keep the price up. The minute they make it legal the price disappears because you can grow it in your back yard.
Q; What’s the problem with that?
A: Because of the money they make on forfeitures, millions of dollars. And they’re taking Democrats off the street. What pothead is going to vote for Bush?
Q: Well, why the hell do they have to bust you at 5:30 in the morning?
A: Shock and awe. Saddam had way more warning than I did, although I spotted cops on bicycles outside my house. I was smoking, making pipes in my basement, but I said, “Bust me. You want to make me a martyr. I’m ready.” They do that at 5:30 in the morning so you can’t think straight. And they were yelling, “You’re not under arrest.” So I would talk.
Q: I overheard you say you’re going back Vancouver?
A: Yeah, but I’m going to keep my residency here. I’m a Canadian and there at least the justice system there makes sense. In Vancouver, there are junkie problems. They’ll break your windows in your car, steal your camcorder or whatever. But you’ll have crime when you have that kind of free society.
Q: You’d rather have a free society where there is a little more crime than a Fascist society where there is less crime?
A: Absolutely. When they come busting in the house at 5:30 in the morning, I felt like a Jewish guy in Nazi Germany. Had I been able to get any kind of a judge that wasn’t politically tied to Bush I wouldn’t even be here.
Q: I listen to people rile against the government and corporations, I do it myself, but then I’m left with the question, “What do I do about it?”
A: Off the top of my head, I think we should all move to Canada. Whatever you’re doing here, do it up there. Even prison workers. I talked to some of the administrators here. “How do you like it?” “Oh, I hate it.” You’re going to spend your life living somewhere you hate?
Q: So many people hate their jobs, but don’t know what to do about it.
A: What’s to stop us all from moving to Canada? There’s clean air. They speak English. There is beautiful countryside. The only thing we don’t have up there is people.
Q: Start a “Move To Canada” movement. Even if it were just metaphorical, it would be pretty funny. Well, what are you going to do for the next 10 years?
A: The I Ching says that once you’ve acquired wealth, then you must help people so basically that’s what I’m going to do. But I realize I can do everything I want to do in Canada. I can make movies, television shows, write books. I can’t really think of any other solution because this is unnerving. When I finish talking to you there is a chance they might strip-search me. Because I’m in jail.
Q: That sucks, but you’ll be out by the time everyone reads this. When we started to talk you said I Ching talked about a reunion. Was this a reference to Cheech?
A: Absolutely. We’re doing another movie. Cheech and Chong, 20 years later. The I Ching was dead on. I throw the coins almost every day.
