Pubdate: Thu, 02 Jun 2005
Source: Kansas City Star (MO)
Copyright: 2005 The Kansas City Star
Contact:  http://www.kcstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/221
Author: Hearne Christopher Jr.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?228 (Paraphernalia)

SHOPS ARE COMING DOWN OFF PARAPHERNALIA SALES

It's End-Of-The-Era Time For Local Head Shops, Kc Police Say.

Gone are those heady days when ballyhooing bongs, retailing roach clips and 
hustling hemp were commonplace, says Kansas City police Detective Maggie 
McGuire.

"The feds are behind us now on all this," McGuire says. "Up until March if 
you'd gone into 7th Heaven or Zowie! you would have seen bongs in the shape 
of guns that you put the barrel into your mouth to smoke out of it, all 
kinds of strange things."

Quoth the police, nevermore.

"Zowie! and all the other businesses that are distributing drug 
paraphernalia (were) issued a notice that they had 30 days to get rid of 
all their drug paraphernalia," McGuire says. "Otherwise they were in 
violation of federal law, and a search warrant would be served upon their 
business."

There's nothing particularly dramatic about the timing, says Drug 
Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Shirley Armstead of St. Louis.

"Parents and community coalitions are the people who are pushing these 
issues," Armstead says. "They're calling the local police and complaining 
about these shops that are selling drug paraphernalia."

The push here started earlier this year, McGuire says.

Since then, Zowie! has closed, 7th Heaven has dialed back its smoking 
section, What? on 39th Street did away with its profitable pipes biz, and 
Coopers at 36th and Broadway posted a list on its door of the "smoking 
accessories" it no longer sells.

Says What? manager Ashley Fletcher: "The only thing keeping us going now is 
the tattoos and the piercing. The shop's dead. Retail is dead. Pipes were 
80 percent of our business. We can't even sell hemp lotion. Like people are 
going to put it in a bowl and smoke it. And we can't sell hemp papers."

"Regular rolling papers are fine," McGuire says. "The only rolling papers 
we made people take off the shelf were the ones with the word 'hemp' in them."

Seems 7th Heaven didn't get the memo. As of Tuesday it was still selling 
papers with names like Jamaican Hemp and Bob Marley Hemp, along with a 
selection of what appeared to be small ceramic pipes. Ostensibly for use 
with tobacco products.

Which speaks to the legal issues at hand.

"The general issue in these cases is whether the products (sold) are likely 
to be used for controlled substances," says criminal attorney J.R. Hobbs, 
who will represent 7th Heaven owner Jan Fichman in his trial next January. 
Fichman and his wife, Anita, were indicted earlier this year by a federal 
grand jury for allegedly selling $3.1 million of illegal drug paraphernalia.
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