Justin Bieber is getting some star support, sort of, in the wake of his pot smoking scandal today. Tommy Chong, half of the iconic comedy duo “Cheech & Chong”, was asked by TMZ in L.A. yesterday if he thought better of Justin Bieber, knowing the singer smokes pot. Chong responded “of course”, and indicated pot was responsible for Bieber's talent. Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus took to Twitter to call out a dangerous and supposedly fake trend on the social site, in which Justin fans are encouraged to engage in “cutting” as a form of protest over Bieber’s pot smoking photo scandal.
Tommy Chong, long a proponent of marijuana, expounded on his answer by insinuating Justin Bieber’s talent is due to smoking pot. He doesn’t think Justin was born with his talent, but rather derives his abilities from getting high.
“I knew [Bieber] was smoking before he knew it. Because of his music. Because of his dancing. The guy is a phenom…It's not just his looks. It's his talent. And you don't get talent like that by drinking alcohol. The herb, man! The herb!”, Chong said.
Who knows how serious Tommy was being with his answer. Or maybe he was just high. But it’s sort of a slam too, because if he’s being serious, he’s in effect saying Justin has no natural born talent.
In related news, a dangerous Twitter trend developed over this whole pot photo controversy. A morbid “Cutting for Bieber” mock campaign was started as an online prank, in which Bieber fans are urged to self-mutilate themselves in protest to the controversial images of the 18 year-old pop star.
The “#cut4bieber” hashtag quickly became the top U.S. trending site on Twitter, according to the Daily Mail. “Tweet a bunch of pics of people cutting themselves and claim we did it because bieber was smoking weed”, the fictitious user wrote.
Twitter users and Bieber fans then began posting graphic images of themselves with slashed wrists, blades and blood. While most are believed to be fake, it is unknown if some might actually be real.
Thankfully the message board has since been removed, but these “internet trolls” also created multiple fake Twitter accounts. They then pretended to be teenage girls and posted pics of themselves with cut arms, all as a protest to get Justin Bieber to stop smoking weed.
TMZ reports that when singer Miley Cyrus heard about it, she couldn’t stand idly by. On Monday she retweeted, “#cut4bieber? Cutting is NOT something to joke about. There are people who are actually suffering from self-harm, this is so disrespectful”.
Another claim some are putting out there is that Justin's visit Saturday to a young fan's hospital room, who is battling leukemia in Utah, was a publicity stunt to deflect from the pot photos.
This assertion seems blatantly unfair to Justin, as he's always been very in touch with and attentive to his young fans. In this arena he's a good guy, and it's just not fair to taint his kind acts with such allegations.
Meanwhile, it has also been said in the wake of the pot pic scandal that Justin's entourage always post a sign in various places, containing a disclaimer that any pictures taken are Bieber’s property and the photographers have no rights to them.
Looks like that didn’t work this time. Tommy Chong also said that we can’t blame Justin either, since all celebrities are into pot these days. “Weed is mainstream as can be”, he said.
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