Pubdate: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Eric Lichtblau RAIDS PUT DRUG-PARAPHERNALIA TRAFFICKERS OUT OF BUSINESS WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 -- Federal officials said today that they had shut down the biggest drug-paraphernalia suppliers in the United States in a series of nationwide raids. In all, charges were brought against 55 people who prosecutors said had trafficked in everything from lipstick-shaped marijuana pipes to gas masks that can double as bongs. Drug paraphernalia, once the province of neighborhood "head shops," has exploded into a billion-dollar industry in which suppliers use the Internet to sell their wares with little fear of prosecution, the officials said. They said the raids announced today had resulted in the seizure of thousands of tons of such products, some of which are used by traffickers to help produce drugs for resale, others by users to conceal drugs. The seized items included drug pipes hidden in school highlighters, soft-drink cans and lipstick cases, officials said. The 55 people charged, most in Pennsylvania and California, were named in nearly three dozen indictments spanning the country. Most of the defendants have been taken into custody, though the authorities are searching for a few. The authorities also said they were shutting down 11 Web sites with names like "smokelab.com" that they said had been used to sell paraphernalia. Any people trying to use such a site today, officials said, were supposed to be forwarded to a Drug Enforcement Administration site informing them that the paraphernalia dealer was out of business. But most of those sites were still up and running hours after the indictments. Federal law makes it a crime to sell drug paraphernalia, which is defined as any product "primarily intended or designed" to aid in the manufacturing, concealing or ingesting of a controlled substance. Marijuana pipes, roach clips, cocaine freebase kits, miniature scales and tools for cutting or diluting raw drugs are all considered banned, officials said. Though the crime has rarely attracted the interest of law enforcement officials in the past, Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that the Justice Department had decided to open a multiagency undercover operation after a recent case in Pittsburgh pointed to the depth of the problem. Some groups critical of the Bush administration's drug policies questioned whether at a time of heightened national security concerns, the department was wasting its resources on a fairly obscure corner of the drug-trafficking industry. But Mr. Ashcroft, joined at a news conference by officials from the D.E.A. and the White House, said the ease with which young people could get their hands on paraphernalia was a growing concern to him and others in the administration. "This is a federal case," the attorney general said, "because it's against the federal law." Mary Beth Buchanan, the United States attorney for western Pennsylvania, whose office led part of the investigation, said that raids around the country had netted "thousands and thousands of tons" of paraphernalia and that investigators were still working to catalog the seizures. Some of the raided businesses manufactured the paraphernalia themselves, using glass-blowing facilities and kilns at warehouses, she said. Revenue for suppliers named in the indictments reached as high as $50 million a year each, Ms. Buchanan said. With the raids, she added, prosecutors believe they have put all the major paraphernalia suppliers in the United States out of business. Those charged face up to three years in prison if convicted, along with fines of up to $250,000. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York group that favors liberalizing drug laws and legalizing marijuana, saw the indictments as part of a broader effort by the Bush administration to crack down on marijuana, even for medicinal purposes. "It's a wasteful and tragic use of resources," Mr. Nadelmann said. One law enforcement specialist, Eric E. Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Silver Spring, Md., also questioned why top law enforcement officials were spending time dealing with drug paraphernalia. Moreover, he said, the crackdown could do unintended damage to public health. "Sweeps like this are very likely to intimidate people who provide sterile needles as a much-approved public health measure," Mr. Sterling said. "They'll be afraid to be mistaken for illegal purveyors of paraphernalia." - --- MAP posted-by: Alex