📝 usncan Note: Why Cheech And Chong’s $100 Million Cannabis Empire Is No Joke
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Weed has always paid off for the godfathers of stoner comedy. Now they’ve built a company that sells THC-infused edibles, drinks and of course some tasty bud, all of which brings in some serious green.
If you spend enough time with Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, America’s best-known pothead entertainers, you’ll hear enough stories to realize why the duo became comedy legends.
Consider this gem: Sometime in the late 1970s, after Marin was wanted by the FBI for dodging the draft during the Vietnam war, and after Cheech and Chong became household names, the Los Angeles native dropped acid with the king of turning on and dropping out—Timothy Leary.
“[Leary] had this great blotter acid,” says Marin, 79, while sitting in his home office near Joshua Tree, California.
On Matador Beach in Malibu one night, Leary taught Marin all about the stars and constellations while the LSD took hold. Marin had visions of cave men looking up at the stars and telling stories about the figures and shapes they saw above. And that’s when he had a revelation: “You could connect with a whole history of people looking up at the sky,” he says. “It was a moment of we-are-all-one by this fact that we’re in this universe that we can identify.”
He also learned one of the best tips for surviving the early days of the war on drugs from Leary’s fifth wife, Barbara. Marin asked her how to disguise a sheet of acid while traveling and she wrote a phone number and address on it. Now, it was just a piece of paper with a woman’s information. “A good smuggling trick,” says Marin.
As for Tommy Chong, now 87, he, too, has his fair share of tales from his decades of being a Hollywood star (including how he got high with Arnold Schwarzenegger during his early years as a body builder on Venice Beach) and a convicted felon. In 2003, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided his home in California in connection with his bong company, Chong Glass, on charges of conspiracy to distribute drug paraphernalia. In September of that year, he was sentenced to nine months in prison. His cellmate? The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, who was serving time for fraud related to his notorious penny stock scheme immortalized by Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film.
One day, while Chong was working on his book Belfort sat down and started writing too. He wrote one page and “he handed it to me, like I was a teacher,” Chong says.
“I looked at the page and I recognized that he had copied [Tom Wolfe’s] The Bonfire of the Vanities. I realized the guy was a thief, he would even plagiarize a book, just out of habit,” Chong says, laughing. “He asked me: ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘You haven’t written shit.”
Chong advised Belfort to write down all the stories he shared at night about “the women, the drugs, the whole thing.” Belfort wrote every day after that. And when they both got out, Belfort showed up at Chong’s house and told him how he sold his memoir and that Scorsese was going to direct the movie. “Wow, that was a trip,” says Chong.
These days, Cheech and Chong are playing by the rules, as long as you ignore the federal laws regarding marijuana. In 2020, the duo, along with their business partners Brandon Harshbarger, Jonathan Black, and Tom Cole, launched two companies, California-based Cheech and Chong Cannabis Co., which licenses its brand, genetics, formulas and retail designs to marijuana companies, and Cheech and Chong’s Global Holding Company, a Nevada-based endeavor that sells hemp-derived products ranging from gummies to flower to THC-infused drinks. (The hemp company also licenses the Cheech and Chong brand to make accessories and apparel.)
And there’s nothing to joke about when it comes to their business, of which they own about 8% each. In 2025, the companies’ combined revenue will hit nearly $100 million from both marijuana and hemp, up from about $50 million last year. The companies, which outsource manufacturing to third parties, are worth roughly $150 million.
Though Cheech and Chong famously split in the mid-1980s after making their first non-stoner comedy, The Corsican Brothers, the pair have reunited many times over the past four decades and it was not a heavy lift to get the brand back together. After all, weed is why the duo became famous in the first place. And as the U.S. cannabis market posted $32 billion in sales last year across 40 states, Cheech and Chong, if anybody, deserve a taste of the action.
Holy Smoke: “Weed is ordained,” Chong says. “It’s from God.”
Cheech & Chong
The two have mellowed with age, but they are not that humble when it comes to their place in the marijuana industry. After all, they are the godfathers of the stoner comedy genre thanks to Up In Smoke, their 1978 debut film followed by Nice Dreams and other movies, all of which influenced generations of films from Dave Chappelle’s Half Baked to Seth Rogen’s Pineapple Express.
“If it wasn’t for Cheech and Chong, there wouldn’t be weed on the planet,” says Chong, who admits he might be exaggerating, just a little. “We invented weed.”
Then again, he also takes a spiritual approach to the plant: “The weed is ordained,” he says, “it’s from God.”
And lord knows they are making the most of it. Currently, there are nine Cheech and Chong branded dispensaries (operated by licensees of the brand under the name Cheech and Chong Dispensoria) across Maine, Massachusetts and New Mexico. One will open in New York later this year with four more under contract. The company also has six hemp shops, (operated by licensees under the name Cheech and Chong Apothecaria) across Texas. Those shops sell hemp-derived THC products, thanks to the federal legalization of hemp-derived cannabinoids under the Farm Bill of 2018. The company’s cannabis products are sold through a total of 1,500 dispensaries across 19 states, bringing in about $34 million in sales this year between licensing agreements and royalties on retail sales.
While celebrity cannabis brands do not typically do well, despite a few exceptions such as Mike Tyson’s Tyson 2.0 and Wiz Khalifa’s Khalifa Kush, Cheech and Chong have a unique advantage—not only are they synonymous with weed, but they also have massive fan base that spans generations.
“My mom knows them as Up In Smoke, I know them as That ‘70s Show and Tin Cup and my kids know ’em as Zootopia and Lion King,” says Cheech and Chong CEO Jonathan Black. “Their brand had endless recognition. You can’t talk about cannabis, or hemp now, without mentioning Cheech and Chong.”
Cannabis sales for the brand have taken off, but the hemp division is even more lucrative—it expects about $60 million in sales by the end of the year. A big portion of hemp sales is its line of THC-infused beverages, Cheech and Chong’s High & Dry seltzer. And the duo just inked a deal with Circle K, which will carry their hemp derived THC-infused beverages in a pilot program across 2,000 stores. Total Wine and More, ABC Fine Wine and Liquors and Binny’s Beverage Depot already carry the stoners’ beverages.
Cannabis In a Can: “[THC drinks] are the growing future of the industry because you don’t need to be into dispensary to buy it,” says Marin. “The drinks are so popular we can’t keep ’em on the shelves.”
Cheech & Chong
While Cheech and Chong still get high the old-fashioned way, at their age they have been enjoying beverages and gummies.
“[THC drinks] are the growing future of the industry because you don’t need to be into dispensary to buy it,” says Marin. Thanks to federal law, hemp-derived THC is legal even though marijuana-derived THC is not. Thanks to this distinction, big liquor retailers across the country now carry THC drinks alongside beer and spirits. “The drinks are so popular we can’t keep ’em on the shelves, which tells you something.”
THC-infused drinks seem to be well timed. A recent Gallup poll found that only 54% of American adults say they drink alcohol, down from 71% in 1977, a historic low for the country.
“Beer is suffering mightily and there’s a huge opportunity for us,” says Cole, who is a board member of Cheech and Chong Cannabis Co. and had been the chairman of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America.
Despite decades of stoner jokes, Cheech and Chong have always been much savvier than their comedic personas. (Marin won the Celebrity Jeopardy Tournament in 2010, defeating Anderson Cooper.) While their goal is to pass the company along to their children—some of Marin’s and Chong’s children work and own a piece of the company already—selling the brand would be an ideal outcome.
“I would absolutely love to sell it, because I don’t have enough time out here in the desert to smoke dope and play guitar,” says Marin. “I need more time. And if I sell the company, I could have more time.”
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