The Art of Glass Blowing

In 2003 well-known comedian Tommy Chong and many other headshop owners and glass bongs manufacturers and distributors were arrested during an anti-bong police operation called "Pipe Dreams", which involved over 2000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers, backed up by SWAT teams with semiautomatic rifles and helicopter units! The dangerous Chong got nine months in jail for "conspiring to distribute drug paraphernalia" and others got similar or harsher sentences.
In many states and countries, thanks to absurd prohibitionist laws and hysteria, glass bongs and pipes are considered controversial instruments per se, deserving "close scrutiny" by legislators and anti-drug agencies, if not immediate prohibition and seizure. It doesn't matter if one buys and uses them to smoke tobacco or perfectly legal smoking blends or just keeps them on a table as a fine sculpture: for the usual suspects a glass pipe means....DRUG!
Fortunately in more recent times, together with the rapid change of people's view of cannabis and consequent slow change of politics, also the glass smoking tools are more tolerated.
Prohibition stupidity aside, nowadays the glass pipes and bongs are truly a legitimate, beautiful (and expensive) form of art and glassblowers a respectable category of skillful, dedicated and inspired artists. To see the high levels that they have reached, it's enough to see this short video, recently shot at the Champs East Glass Show in Atlantic City, USA.