there are a couple of stores in the city where i live (wilmington, NC) that sell cigars. that's not their main thrust, but they do sell cigars. and lighters. and pipes -- but apparently there are "good" pipes and "bad" pipes.
along with all this, these stores also sell various blends of tobacco -- cigarette tobacco, pipe tobacco and herbal blends. a few days ago there was a HUGE "bust" and the stores had much of their stock taken away as "evidence" that they were dealing in "drug paraphenalia."
just made me wonder if i should worry about having my own two pipes and a couple of lighters taken away by the feds -- i wonder if my nibo 3-flame lighter, by virtue of it looking "way cool" somehow makes it into "drug paraphenalia." after all, i COULD conceivably light a joint with it! and my tobacco pipes? i COULD conceivably smoke pot in those!
better not buy any more cans of soda, folks. you KNOW they can be made into a bong!
here's what the local paper's editor had to say about this big bust (the feds came in with national photographers and videographers to document this amazing crime scene):
Busting retailers: Far out, man
To confiscate marijuana-smoking gadgets sold openly in two Wilmington stores apparently required law-enforcement officers from the federal, state and local levels.
Led by John Ashcroft's U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Frank D. Whitney, intrepid officers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the State Bureau of Investigation, the New Hanover County Sheriff's Department and the Wilmington Police Department somehow managed to detect the presence of dopey paraphernalia and seize it from stores here and in Raleigh.
It was as if the massed forces of Eliot Ness had busted one of Al Capone's speakeasies and confiscated the little umbrellas that went in the tropical cocktails.
Of course, photos and video footage of cheesy smoke dispensers would look good in campaign commercials, and probably will.
Americans are threatened by terrorists trying to murder us and destroy our free institutions. We're threatened by killer drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. And to be sure, it's said that the marijuana on sale these days is much more powerful than the weed some adults remember (or think they do) from their hippy-dippy days.
But terrorists and drug dealers are hard to find and convict. Retail clerks whose dubious wares are on brazen display don't present quite so difficult a challenge.
Fortunately, no officers were harmed in the making of this media event.