Pubdate: Tue, 11 Dec 2007
Source: San Diego City Beat (CA)
Copyright: 2007 San Diego City Beat
Contact:  http://www.sdcitybeat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2764
Author: Edwin Decker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?228 (Paraphernalia)

'NEGATIVE ELEMENTS'

An Open Letter to Mike Agguirre and the Morality Police

"We made a decision we're going after every single shop  that sells
drug paraphernalia." -City Attorney Mike Aguirre, CityBeat, Nov. 28, 2007

Dear Mike Aguirre: Are you nuts? Do you really believe  that anybody 
will stop doing drugs if you shut down the  paraphernalia suppliers? 
We druggies are highly  resourceful. Pot smokers can carve apples 
into  elaborate smoking devices with a nail file they  fabricate from 
possum bones when necessary. Your  typical tweaker can comb an 
eight-ball out of the  carpet with a pair of chopsticks. These are 
imaginative  people, sir-they will not be forestalled.

As reported by CityBeat staff writer Eric Wolff, the  city attorney
sent letters to 52 smoke shops, ordering  them to stop selling drug
paraphernalia.

Question: If I can get all the hash, weed, coke, crack,  smack and 
speed I need, do you think I'll have any  trouble whatsoever finding 
devices with which to  consume them? Do you really believe, if your 
interdict  succeeds, that one less bong hit will be sucked or 
one  less gram snorted, cooked or smoked? As a recreational  consumer 
of narcotics, I can tell you that I don't see  that happening.

Cracking down on head shops is like changing "french  fries" to
"freedom fries" or invading Iraq to stop  terrorism. It is an utterly
vacuous act designed to  swindle people into believing their
government is doing  something about a problem which government
exaggerated  in the first place.

"They're marketing to younger people," Aguirre said.  "We see lots of
youngsters going in and buying…  all that crap."

Don't you just love how he pours on the "save the  children" sauce and
expects us to slurp it all up  without question? I challenge Mike
Aguirre to show  exactly where and how they market to kids. As a
person  who frequents smoke shops, reads their ads and uses  their
products, I just don't see it. OK, maybe somebody  out there somewhere
has a Sponge Bob Square Bong on his  shelf, but isn't it more likely
they're marketing it as  humorous bong irony for adults and not
8-year-olds?

Sponge Bob, as everyone knows, is hilarious when you're
baked.

Also, I find it suspicious when Aguirre says "we see" a  lot of
youngsters buying. As a person who frequents the  local narcotoriums,
I'm just not seeing it. My  experience is that these shops avoid
selling to minors  because they're terrified of getting shut down. And
if  by "we see" he meant the police, who staked out the  shops, I have
to wonder: If they really witnessed  clerks selling to kids, why
didn't they bust them right  then? It is illegal to sell tobacco
products to minors,  right? Why didn't they confiscate the contraband
and  arrest the clerks? Certainly, it would be to their  advantage to
do so. A few "harmful matter to minors"  busts would have gathered
significantly more support  for the cause. So, no, Mike, I don't think
you or any  of your morality commandos saw squat. I think you're  just
playing the "save the children" card to demonize  the head shops and
turn the public against them.

Even if it were true that they're selling to kids,  well, so what? If
this were truly the problem, then all  you need to do is enforce
existing laws about selling  to minors and-boom!-exaggerated
non-problem solved.

It's incredible that we're even having this discussion.

How much of a thought policeman do you have to be to  criminalize a
product that might be used for illegal  purposes? Guess you'd better
ban butter knives, too,  because you can break all sorts of laws with
one of  those razors of Satan. For instance, you can use a  butter
knife to: mug a tourist, torture the  neighborhood pets, stab somebody
in the neck, hijack a  plane, stir Rohypnol into a drink, cut graffiti
into  trees that says things like "Mike Aguirre is a  self-involved
power-monger."

Just as a butter knife can be used for illegal  purposes, anything
sold in a head shop can be used  legally. But it's really not about
the paraphernalia.  The issue is the clientele. Nobody's going after
the  tobacconists for selling rolling papers? And I'm quite  certain
the narcotoriums aren't the only place where  you can buy vials,
scales or screens. The problem isn't  the individual items-rather,
it's that these items are  stocked under one roof, together, a
one-stop shopping  mart that attracts drug users, thereby horrifying
the  community, which, by the way, has been whipped into a  rabid fear
of recreational drug users by their  government, who will now step in
and solve the  non-problem for them.

"The shops attract a very negative element," said  Arthur Schwartz,
president of the North Park Community  Association.

Well, what do you know, yet another community leader  spreading around
gobs of fear marmalade with the butter  knife of moral
superiority.

Dear Mr. Schwartz, as a person who frequents head  shops, I can tell
you, I'm not seeing it. In all my  years, I never saw no robberies, no
beat-downs, no  weapons displayed nor used, no episodes of sidewalk
harassment. In fact, I've seen far more problems in  nightclubs,
7-Elevens and Roberto's Mexican joints than  I have ever seen in any
smoke shack.

So, piss off, North Park Community Association. I am  not a negative
element. Nor are my friends or their  friends or the thousands of
people citywide who  patronize these stores. We are regular people
with  regular jobs and regular families who contribute to  this town
in all our regular ways and who have earned  the right to consume our
recreational chemicals of  choice every bit as much as the smoker, the
boozer, the  dipper, the snuffer, the Big Mac eater and the soda  popper.

If anyone is a negative element, it's you people.  Because you bully
people into obeying your myopic moral  code, target small businessmen
to crush their  livelihood and use your clout like a cleaver, just
like  that sue-happy Mike Aguirre, whose morality I'll hold  mine
against any day of the week. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake