Thank goodness most readers of VanRamblings live in Canada, where soft drug laws verge on the reasonable. In the United States, many of those convicted of simple possession of marijuana are languishing in prison, for periods of up to 60 years.
Of course, comedian and satirist Tommy Chong, 65, got off relatively easily when U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab sentenced him to only nine months in a federal lockup, and fined him $20,000, for distributing drug paraphernalia through his Internet-based California company, Nice Dreams Enterprises.
How much did it cost to prosecute Tommy Chong? Would you believe $12 million? Obviously, the linked article suggests, the money spent on prosecuting Chong could have been much better spent.
Adding to the furore over Chong’s conviction, the following item from a NORML Free Tommy Chong Action Alert …

Ironically, Tommy Chong was sentenced on September 11, 2003, exactly two years after the worst terrorist attacks in American history. With Osama Bin Laden still on the loose and President Bush admitting that the war on terrorism is far from over, it is preposterous that we would waste valuable law enforcement resources locking up a comedian for selling glass pipes. Can anyone here honestly say they feel safer today because Tommy Chong, a comedian and actor, has been sentenced to 9 months in federal prison for selling pipes on the Internet? Of course not. These laws do nothing except make criminals out of otherwise law abiding businessmen.

Thanks to Talk Left for reminding us of the hypocrisy and unjustness of Tommy Chong’s continued incarceration.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

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