Pubdate: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 Source: News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) Copyright: 2009 The News and Observer Publishing Company Contact: http://www.newsobserver.com/484/story/433256.html Website: http://www.newsobserver.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304 Author: Josh Shaffer BILL TARGETS TOOLS OF DRUG USE Glass vials used for smoking crack are easy to get in some neighborhoods. Lawmakers hope that making people supply ID when buying them will discourage users. RALEIGH -- In Raleigh's rougher neighborhoods, $4 will buy a glass crack pipe with a fake rose or the innards of a cheap ballpoint pen stuffed inside for a disguise. You don't buy them on the street, but from a corner shop clerk who keeps a stash hidden behind the counter. To police and to neighbors, "glass roses" are a legal nuisance. But a bill traveling through the N.C. House would require anyone buying a short glass vial to provide a name, address, signature and photo ID - -- an effort aimed at curbing the sale of drug paraphernalia. "You walk in these stores, and it kind of slaps you in the face," said Rep. Mark Hilton, a Catawba County Republican who sponsored the bill. "It's obvious what they're used for." Pipes can be found in Hilton's district, or in Durham, where the Rev. Melvin Whitley has pressed for a ban, and in any neighborhood statewide where crack cocaine thrives. But samples shown to House members came from Southeast Raleigh, where the glass vials can be bought along with plastic tubes equipped with a blade for slicing open small cigars. "It takes the guts out of the cigar; you throw it on the ground and put your marijuana in," state Alcohol Law Enforcement Agent Israel Morrow told a group of Southeast Raleigh neighbors last week. "If you look in my evidence locker, I have beer cans that are used as crack pipes." House Bill 722 would require that any glass pipe of a certain length or diameter be kept behind the counter, which is already the custom in most stores. But Hilton hopes that signing a register would be a deterrent, and also give parole and probation officers a chance to see what their clients are doing. Such a bill has surfaced before in the House. In a previous incarnation, Hilton said, the rules also extended to rolling papers, which the tobacco industry opposed. Hilton would like to see the cigar tubes subject to regulation -- cigar smokers know of no reason to slice a stogie lengthwise -- but he is wary of bringing out new opponents. "I don't want the bill to die again," Hilton said. Rep. Deborah Ross, the Raleigh Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee where the glass vial bill has been assigned, said she hopes to bring it up for a hearing before mid-May. Crackdowns have happened in California, where alcohol agents will pull liquor licenses from stores that sell pipes. But in Oregon, police have described paraphernalia laws as difficult to enforce. Merchants often say they can't guess their customers' intent. New Bern Mini Mart in Southeast Raleigh carries both the glass roses and the EZ Splitz cigar cutters behind the counter. A merchant charged $2.12 for the cutter, but he accepted a dollar in quarters instead. The merchant explained that the owner was out of town, started to explain that he doesn't care how people use the merchandise, then declined to talk further because he did not wish to get in trouble. Downtown, "Taz" Zarka refuses to sell the pipes or cutters at any of his four convenience stores, calling them both immoral and bad for business. Merchants who sell them, he said, are lured by the chance to sell 30-cent merchandise at greater than a 100 percent markup. "All they're thinking about is a dollar sign," he said. "It's greed. All it's going to bring you is trash. You take care of your community and your community takes care of you. That's the only equation." At a community meeting in Southeast Raleigh, Morrow asked rhetorically whether crack smokers can find other means if pipes become too much trouble. "Yes, they can," he said. But they'll have to find a new way to slap neighbors in the face. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart