Disclaimer: There is no punchline in this story, irony is dead and we live in a post-satire world. This is the context necessary to digest the news that Tommy Chong, the 80-year-old comedian, missed a speaking engagement in Canada, where he was born and where recreational marijuana is now legal, because he couldn\u2019t find his passport.<\/p>\n
Chong<\/a>\u00a0has been an international celebrity since the 1970s, a high profile owing more than a little bit to his and longtime collaborator\u00a0Cheech Marin\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0affinity to marijuana \u2014and, this writer can attest, he is by all accounts a warm, kind, and gracious soul,\u00a0generous with his time and happy to talk at length about his 60 years in show business<\/a>.<\/p>\n Now a multi-dimensional marijuana entrepreneur, with his likeness licensed to cannabis strains and cannabis accessories, as well as a two-time cancer survivor \u2014 a record that he attributes wholly to his lifelong marijuana habit \u2014 Chong was scheduled to be on the ground in Canada on Wednesday for the first day of that country\u2019s recreational marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n Though he has lived for decades in California (and served time in an American federal prison after DEA agents set him up in 2004 for running a bong company) Chong is Canadian by birth. He grew up in Calgary, where he says he first tried cannabis as a 17-year-old in the 1950s, and ran a nightclub in Vancouver before fate and fortune brought him to Los Angeles. He was supposed to jet from Southern California to British Columbia for an event celebrating legalization\u2019s first day north of the border when,\u00a0as the UK Independent reported<\/a>, he discovered he couldn\u2019t find his passport.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, I\u2019m stuck here,\u201d he told the Toronto Star on Tuesday. \u201cI lost my passport, so we\u2019re going through the dance of a celebrity trying to get a passport fast.\u201d<\/p>\n There are limits to what fame can do for you. Come Wednesday, Chong was still without the necessary travel documents. So he missed his flight. He did not make it. He missed the big day in his native land. (This is a pun-free blog post.)<\/p>\n Due to unforeseen complications we will be rescheduling today\u2019s event for the legalization of recreational marijuana for FRIDAY the 19th from 5pm-9pm. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but we still hope to see you all at this incredible event and to see me! pic.twitter.com\/8Cn6UuvCPi<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Tommy Chong (@tommychong) October 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Chong is lucky in a variety of ways. Were he holding a Canadian passport, he might find travel back into the United States difficult, or canceled entirely. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have indicated that they intend to enforce federal marijuana law to the letter, which includes denying entry to any foreign nationals who admit to using cannabis, who are also eligible for a lifetime ban. That draconian treatment can be avoided by paying a fine \u2014 making the border prohibition scheme look even more like a protection racket than usual. In the meantime, Chong is still a handy watchword for what not to do at the border.<\/p>\n Bill Blair is Canada\u2019s minister for border security. \u201cFrankly,\u201d he said recently, \u201cif you show up at the border looking like Cheech and Chong, you\u2019re going\u201d to suffer additional inspections or interviews, on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n But you have to make it there first.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0did you know Tommy Chong was Canadian?<\/p>\n The post Tommy Chong Missed Canada\u2019s Marijuana Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Disclaimer: There is no punchline in this story, irony is dead and we live in a post-satire world. This is the context necessary to digest the news that Tommy Chong, the 80-year-old comedian, missed a speaking engagement in Canada, where he was born and where recreational marijuana is now legal,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,34,50,5278,99,687,2951,1836,6159],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29915,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29914\/revisions\/29915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Tommy Chong Missed Canada\u2019s Marijuana Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"