POT BUSTS of the Rich and Famous

As ineffective as it really is, the War on Drugs has still managed to mess up millions of people’s lives by putting an arrest on their record—or worse—just for smoking or possessing a little weed. And Johnny Law especially loves to stick a feather in his cap when big-name busts get covered in the news, like these newsmakers below, most of whom don’t have any business being called criminals for these “crimes.”

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR. One of the best basketball players in NBA history, and a longtime migraine sufferer, Kareem was busted for marijuana possession in Canada (1998) and the U.S. (2000), and got misdemeanor charges.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG. The jazz legend was arrested in 1931 for marijuana possession, which totally blows. But ultimately the charge was suspended.

HOYT AXTON. The country musician/actor and his wife were arrested in 1997 at their Montana house with just over a pound of marijuana, which he used to help ease stress and pain following a 1995 stroke. They were fined and their sentences were deferred.

DAVID BOWIE. The Thin White Duke was arrested in 1976 with about a half-pound of grass on him. He was facing a maximum of fifteen years in the slammer, but the charges were dropped. Wham bam thank you, ma’am.

JAMES BROWN. The hardest working man in show business needed to relax at some point. And while relaxing with “just a little tiny bit” of herb in 1998, he was arrested on charges of marijuana possession. He told reporters that he used marijuana for medicinal purposes to help ease the pain from bad eyes, and later, the charges were dropped and he got back to work.

LENNY BRUCE. The blue comic got arrested for possessing the green in 1961 and ’63, and was hounded by the cops for most of his adult life for all kinds of charges, many of them trumped up. He died at age 39, according to Phil Spector, of “an overdose of police.”

NEIL CASSADY. The Beat author offered a few joints to an undercover cop in a San Fran nightclub and ended up in San Quentin prison for two years. Just a stupid waste of taxpayer resources—wasting a cop’s entire day on the stakeout when he could have been fighting actual crimes, and then blowing thousands of dollars to keep the poor guy locked up—to stop a guy from trying to make someone happy.

TOMMY CHONG. In 2003, Tommy Chong was the victim of one of the most brutal judicial decisions in the history of drug arrests—because the conviction didn’t even involve drugs! Chong’s successful online glass pipe business, Nice Dreams, was the target—along with around fifty similar businesses nationwide—of what the U.S. Attorneys’ office called “Operation Pipe Dreams.” Cute name, guys. For selling 7,500 glass bongs and pipes, Chong was fined $20,000, had to forfeit over $100,000 in cash and all of his wares, and spent nine months in prison. All for selling pipes which, technically speaking—which is all that usually matters in jurisprudence—could have been used for tobacco.

TONY CURTIS. The actor most famous for dressing in drag in Some Like It Hot, with Marilyn Monroe, got busted with bud in Britain in 1970. He should have had a secret compartment built into his purse.

MITCH DANIEL. The current governor of Indiana smoked pot while he was a student at Princeton, and got busted for possession in 1970, spending a couple of nights in jail for his troubles.

BOB DENVER. Gilligan from the TV show Gilligan’s Island got busted in 1998 after he signed for a delivery package containing marijuana. The funny thing is, the sender was Dawn Wells—a.k.a. Mary Ann from the show—but Denver never gave her up in court. Luckily for all, he only got six months’ probation. Mr. Howell was ready to bail him out if needed.

NEIL DIAMOND. The singer with amazing hair was busted in a 1976 raid on his house, which produced under an ounce of marijuana. Nice job wasting taxpayer dollars there, boys. The arrest was struck from his record after he attended a six-month drug program—another waste of taxpayer money!

SNOOP DOGG. It was only a matter of time—each of several times—before Snoop got busted for possession of marijuana. But two of the cases stand out. In January 2012, he was busted at the same Texas border stop where Willie Nelson was busted, just a few years after the two musicians collaborated on the song and video “My Medicine.” And in June of that year, he got nabbed in Norway for possession, and received a two-year ban from that country. Which begs the question: What the hell was Snoop Dogg doing in Norway?

DONOVAN. They called him “Mellow Yellow” for a reason. In 1966, the Scottish folkie won the honor of being the first big British pop star to get busted for marijuana possession, and was banned from the U.S. for almost two years because of the stigma.

FREDDY FENDER. In yet another horribly unbalanced conviction for marijuana possession, the popular musician with one of the sweetest hairdos in music history was busted in 1960 with two freaking joints and ended up spending almost three freaking years at the Angola prison farm in Louisiana. Governor Jimmie Davis, also a songwriter, later pardoned Fender and he was released.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD. The entire band got busted for possessing “sugar magnolia” a few times. The first came in 1967 when the house they all shared in San Francisco was raided on a tip. Some members of the band, but not Jerry Garcia, were arrested, and the charges were soon dropped. They were arrested again in their hotel room in Hawaii after a performance; again, Garcia managed to escape the charge. None of the guys did any time for their “crime.”

ART GARFUNKEL. This cat from the musical duo Simon and Garfunkel, and best known for his amazing white-guy afro, was arrested for marijuana possession in 2004 and again in 2005.

WOODY HARRELSON. The proud pot smoker was arrested in 1996 for planting four cannabis hemp seeds in Kentucky. His goal was to teach the government a lesson in botany, by challenging a law that didn’t distinguish between marijuana and the mostly THC-free hemp. The charge was dismissed, but the government didn’t learn anything.

GEORGE HARRISON. The Beatle and his wife Patty Boyd were arrested in 1969 at their home in London for marijuana possession. According to Harrison, the 120 joints that were “found” were actually planted by the police, and that they never found his actual stash that was on premises. The overzealous cop—Sergeant Pilcher—who was also responsible for John Lennon’s arrest the year before, was later arrested himself and convicted of planting drugs on many victims of his bogus arrests.

ALLEN IVERSON. A good friend of Basketball Jones, the little NBA star with the big heart and bigger lungs got caught with a big bag of pot in 1997. He did a bunch of hours of community service to get off.

MICK JAGGER. The Rolling Stones front man was arrested in 1967 and 1970 for marijuana possession, but got off both times after spending just one night in jail for the first bust.

KEN KESEY. The leader of the Merry Pranksters, and author of such classic books as One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest, Kesey was arrested in 1965 for marijuana possession in California. But he pulled another prank, faking his suicide for the cops’ benefit by having his friends leave his truck parked near a cliff with a suicide note inside; meanwhile, he fled to Mexico. Upon returning eight months later, he was arrested, convicted, and spent five months in a county jail before hiring a well-known marijuana attorney and getting released.

TIMOTHY LEARY. The psychologist and champion of LSD (he studied it at Harvard before it became illegal) was first arrested for marijuana possession in 1965 when he took the rap for his daughter, who was holding a very small amount in her underwear as they tried to enter the U.S. from Mexico. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison—thirty years!—given a $30,000 fine, and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. He appealed the case and the sentence was later overturned. In 1968, he was arrested again, this time in Laguna Beach, California, for possession of two marijuana roaches—two roaches!—which he claims were planted on him by the arresting officer. He was later sentenced for the two-roach bust to ten years in prison, with another ten years added for a prior arrest, and ordered to serve the twenty years consecutively. Twenty years! For two roaches! He escaped from a low-security prison in 1970 and went on the run to several countries outside the U.S. He was captured by U.S. officials in Afghanistan in 1973 and deported back to the States, where he was held on $5 million bail thanks to President Nixon calling him “the most dangerous man in America.” (Look who’s talking.) He was sent to Folsom Prison in California and faced a 95-year sentence, but Governor Jerry Brown ordered his release in 1976.

JOHN LENNON. The Beatle was arrested along with wife Yoko Ono in 1968 for possession of 200 grams of hash in their London flat. Lennon plead guilty and paid a one-hundred-fifty pound fine. In 1972, paranoid U.S. President Richard Nixon set in motion plans to deport Lennon from the U.S., citing the 1968 misdemeanor conviction in London as the reason, and on March 23, 1973, the U.S. government ordered Lennon to leave the country within sixty days. Nixon’s crimes involving the Watergate scandal soon were uncovered, though, and led to his impeachment. The next president, Gerald Ford, had no interest in continuing the deportation plan, and in 1975 Lennon was granted the right to remain in the one place in the world he wanted to be—New York City.

BOB MARLEY. Surprisingly, the most famous pot-smoking musician of all time only got arrested for possession once, in London in 1977. Coincidentally, during his two-year stay in England in the mid-seventies, he recorded two awesome stoner albums, Exodus and Kaya.

PAUL MCCARTNEY. The Beatle was busted with marijuana a few times, but none was as bad as the bust in Japan in 1980 almost was, when he was caught with nearly eight ounces of weed in his luggage. If tried and convicted in Japan, he likely would have faced up to seven years in prison there. But he was deported and told never to return to that country (although he did return, and performed there, a decade later).

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY. The Dazed and Confused actor had the cops called on him one night in 1999, at 2:30 a.m., for excessive noise. Turns out, he was playing the bongos naked. And when he resisted arrest for that infraction, the cops searched his house and arrested him for marijuana possession. He beat the pot charge, but had to pay $50 for the loud bongo playing. Kind of ironic that he beat the bong charge but could not beat the bongo.

ROBERT MITCHUM. One of the greatest actors in Hollywood history was also the victim of one of the most famous busts—and most ridiculous sentences—in marijuana history. By September of 1948, Mitchum had become a Hollywood superstar. While relaxing with actress Lila Leeds and some kind buds, the duo were caught in a sting operation by the police, and Mitchum was convicted and sentenced to prison. He spent a week in county jail, and then forty-three days on a California prison farm, before the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office exposed his arrest as a set-up and overturned the conviction.

BILL MURRAY. In 1970, while a student at Regis University in Colorado, he was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for trying to smuggle nearly nine pounds of marijuana. If anyone who ever lived on planet Earth could ever talk their way out of getting caught smuggling nine pounds of marijuana, it’s Bill Murray. And he did. He got off with a misdemeanor and five years’ probation.

WILLIE NELSON. The world-famous country singer—and current co-chair of the NORML advisory board—was busted at the Texas border in 2006 for possession of 1.5 pounds of marijuana and several ounces of mushrooms, fined just over a thousand bucks, and placed on probation for six months. But it could have been much worse, if not for the quick thinking of his band and crew, who all claimed ownership of the drugs. The amounts confiscated were enough for a felony if possessed by one person, but since five others claimed possession, Nelson’s charges dropped to a misdemeanor.

PAUL REUBENS. Best known to America as the character Pee-Wee Herman—and best known to stoners as the snooty desk clerk in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie and Howie Hamburger Dude in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams—Reubens was arrested in 1983 for marijuana possession, and got probation. This bust had nothing to do with Pee-Wee’s more infamous arrest for indulging in self-abuse in a Florida adult movie theater in 1991. As stupid as it is to arrest someone for having marijuana, even we have to admit that it’s stupider to arrest someone for jerking off in an adult movie theater.

KEITH RICHARDS. Despite all of his hard-drug use and troubles with the law, the Rolling Stones’ guitarist was only sent to prison once, and that was for marijuana. Keef and friends, including Mick Jagger, were raided at Keef’s Sussex estate. In June 1967, Keef was sentenced to one year in prison for allowing marijuana to be smoked on his property, and was taken directly to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in London. He made bail the next day, and his conviction was overturned on appeal.

DAVID LEE ROTH. The acrobatic Van Halen front man was arrested in 1993 after buying some weed from an undercover cop in New York City’s Washington Square Park. Isn’t that the roadies’ job? Diamond Dave’s description of the purchase was, “Ten dollars’ worth of Jamaican bunk reefer, man.”

CARLOS SANTANA. The guitar god was busted in 1991 at the Houston Airport for carrying five grams of marijuana from Mexico. Five grams? That’s not even enough to roll one quarter-pounder doobie!

DIONNE WARWICK. In 2002, the legendary singer was detained at the Miami International Airport when about a dozen joints were found in her bag. The charges were dropped after she agreed to do public service announcements warning against illegal drug use. If you look closely at the PSAs, you can see she has her fingers crossed.

DAWN WELLS. Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island was not just an alleged “dealer” (see the Bob Denver bust on page 51), but she was also an alleged toker. The brunette castaway was arrested in 2007 during a traffic stop, and four joints and a few containers of marijuana were uncovered in her car. She went to jail after failing a field sobriety test, was fined $410.50 (couldn’t they have just made it an even $420?), and placed on probation for six months. “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Howell.