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Pleads guilty to selling marijuana bongs, pipes

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

He's the bearded icon of the 1970s drug culture, but the Chong half of the "Cheech and Chong" comedy act seemed like a typically contrite federal drug defendant when he showed up yesterday in U.S. District Court here.

	Actor Tommy Chong laughs while speaking with reporters after pleading guilty to selling drug paraphernalia over the Internet yesterday morning in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

Decked out in a suit, with lawyers at his side, Tommy Chong uttered only "Yes, your honor" and "No, your honor" in addressing U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab.

There wasn't a single "Hey, man!" from America's most famous pothead.

Chong, 64, who has spent a career extolling the virtues of smoking dope along with his pal Cheech Marin, waived indictment and pleaded guilty to distributing bongs and marijuana pipes on the Internet through his family company, Nice Dreams Enterprises, which is named for one of his goofy movies.

He also entered a guilty plea for the company, which does business as Chong Glass in Gardena, Calif.

The case against him was part of "Operation Pipe Dreams," a national crackdown on drug paraphernalia that began in Pittsburgh during the prosecution of Akhil Kumar Mishra and his wife, Rajeshwari, who ran two head shops Downtown in the 1990s.

After an investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Mishras were convicted in federal court here in 2000 of selling illegal drug paraphernalia and conspiracy.

Using information from that case, the feds started pursuing distributors and wholesalers across the United States. Chong's enterprise was one of them.

He could get up to three years in prison, but because he has no prior arrests, he's probably facing a range of six months to a year behind bars. One of his lawyers, Pittsburgh attorney Stanton Levenson, said he'll ask for home detention rather than prison.

Chong's California attorney, Richard Hirsch, said his client admitted to what he'd done and now just wants to get on with his work. Chong, in fact, was scheduled to perform his comedy routine in Florida last night and received permission from the judge to make the trip.

"He's very anxious to get this matter behind him and get back to his real job, which is making people laugh," said Hirsch.

It wasn't clear if Chong, who recently had a role on Fox's "That '70s Show," will modify his act to tone down his drug-addled comedy bits. He said he will continue to speak "the truth" at his shows and he's planning another movie with Marin, but he also told reporters that he no longer smokes dope.

Operation Pipe Dreams culminated in February with the arrest of some 55 people and the shutdown of head shops and distributors across the country. Chong wasn't arrested at the time, but the family business, which employs several glass-blowers, was among those raided. Agents also searched his house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., and seized business records.

Federal grand juries in Pittsburgh and Iowa returned most of the indictments, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared in Pittsburgh with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan to announce the arrests.

Had Chong elected to go to trial, Buchanan said, the evidence against him would have included testimony from DEA agents who bought paraphernalia from Chong Glass.

The government would also have produced records from head shops in Western Pennsylvania that bought Chong's merchandise, much of which carried his autograph or picture.

Chong was hardly shy about promotion.

"Tommy would only put his name on the best," his Web site said.

He was also outspoken about marijuana prosecution.

"Every time they bust a celebrity, it shows them just how stupid the laws are," he told the Dayton Daily News in 1998. "Cigarettes and alcohol can kill you, and here comes pot that hasn't killed a single person in history."

Buchanan said Chong, who had invested more than $290,000 in the Nice Dreams business, often posed for photos with customers at head shops. At one such appearance at a Texas head shop last December, undercover agents bought some Chong Glass bongs and had Chong sign them, along with a T-shirt showing him smoking pot. The agents also had their photo taken with him.

On Feb. 14, agents bought some autographed bongs from Chong Glass and had them shipped to a fake business they'd set up in Beaver Falls called Thompson Novelties.

Agents used those undercover buys to get their search warrant. During the searches, according to Buchanan, Chong told agents, "We make something that people can smoke marijuana out of safely."

In defending Chong, Levenson and Hirsch suggested that he didn't realize selling bongs is against the law.

"I don't think very many people knew this was illegal," Hirsch said.

Levenson told reporters that the case is the first one he knew of in which the federal government had chosen to enforce the paraphernalia laws.

But he apparently forgot about the Mishra case, a prominent local example of just such a prosecution. Federal agents raided the couple's two Downtown shops repeatedly and told them to stop selling paraphernalia. A federal judge warned them to stop, too.

They refused. After a second federal conviction, U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich described Akhil Mishra as "obstinate" and "defiant" and sent him to prison for two years.