PASTOR: 'PEN' IS USED FOR CRACK

He Asks Raleigh to Ban Sale of Device

RALEIGH - All the tools for smoking crack cocaine -- minus the drug
- -- can be easily purchased at Raleigh convenience stores. On Tuesday
night, the City Council got an up-close look.

The Rev. Melvin Whitley brought his purchases from four Southeast
Raleigh convenience stores to City Hall, asking the council to ban
the sale of "pen in a glass," commonly used as a pipe for smoking drugs.

Buy a glass case with a cheap pen cartridge inside for roughly $3.50,
add a shred of Chore Boy scrubber for a filter, and you've got an
easy route to drug addiction, Whitley said.

He bought them all Tuesday at stores on Bragg, Haywood, East Martin
and Haywood streets and had the council and City Attorney Thomas
McCormick look over the items.

"Every address I gave you was a high-crime area," he said. "They only
sell them in high-crime areas."

The council voted to send the issue to its Law and Public Safety
Commission for more study. "There are certain communities that are
being affected in a very negative way," Councilman James West said.

Stores may not even know how the pen-pipes are used, said Daniel
Coleman, president of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association.

He asked that the city publicize the unintended consequences on "the
off chance that there are retail outlets that are offering these
items wondering why so many are being sold."

Glass pipes disguised as household items also come as a vase for tiny roses.

Whitley has already fought "love roses" in Durham, helping to enact a
$500 fine for stores that sell the tubes of fake flowers.

The pens and roses are sold under the counter -- not on public
display. You have to look the part to get a clerk to pull them out,
Whitley said, but a recent experiment by The News & Observer showed
that part is easy to play. Big John's Community Grocery on Edenton
Street sold one with no questions asked.

Whitley said Tuesday night he was encouraged that the council will at
least talk about curbing the sales, and he is hoping Fayetteville and
Wilmington will follow suit.

A House bill would require pen-in-a-glass buyers to furnish photo
identification and have their names stay on a registry for two years,
but Whitley said it is stalled.

"This is not a household item," Whitley said. "They are making money
off people's misery