PARAPHERNALIA LAW APPROVED

If a person should know his products will be used to take drugs, he
could be fined $500 or jailed for 60 days.

CLEARWATER - Attorneys in suits and ties or residents dressed Florida
casual are usually the ones pleading for a favorable decision before
the County Commission.

But on Tuesday, it was men with facial piercings, a marijuana
legalization advocate and a woman making a distinction between
appearance and truth by dressing as a prostitute.

They didn't do so well.

Over their objections, commissioners unanimously approved a law meant
to quash the sale of products often associated with illegal drug use.

"I'm still confused," Alan Berger, 51, co-owner of Balls of Steel in
Gulfport, said after the vote. "Should I pull everything off the
shelves? I guarantee you, we will fight."

The new law stems from the work of a Drug Paraphernalia Abatement
Task Force that County Commission Chairman Ken Welch helped organize
a year ago.

Under state law, prosecution for the sale of drug paraphernalia can
be difficult. People are guilty only when it can be proved that they
knew that the product they sold would be used to ingest drugs.

The new law requires no such proof.

Now in Pinellas County, those who reasonably should know that what
they sold, advertised or manufactured would be used to take illegal
drugs will be in violation of the law.

Similar to ordinances adopted elsewhere in the country, the new
measure is designed to broaden law enforcement's ability to combat
the sale of drug paraphernalia.

Violators could receive a fine of $500 or 60 days in jail. Repeat
offenders could see their businesses closed.

Kurt Donely, executive director of Florida's chapter of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said 60 days in jail
is an extreme penalty.

"I would lose my house, my car," Donely said. "Something would happen
to my pets."

Tamara Pare, 23, an employee of Purple Haze Tobacco & Accessories in
St. Petersburg, spoke while dressed in red heels, a short,
peach-colored skirt and a black halter top.

Pare said she was a "visual metaphor" that underscored the
ridiculousness of the "reasonably should know" standard in the new law.

"Many reasonable people today might see me dressed like this and
think I'm a prostitute," Pare told the board.

Her boss, Purple Haze owner Leo Calzadilla, 45, played a prepared
videotape of him speaking from his store. Water pipes lined the
shelves behind him.

Calzadilla stressed that he was in the business of selling to tobacco
enthusiasts. Many of his products, such as detoxification remedies
and home drug test kits, are also found in health food stores and
pharmacies, he said.

It is outrageous to apply the law to him, he said, when mainstream
retailers also sell products that can be used to intoxicating effect
or turned into paraphernalia.

"This ordinance is going to do nothing but tie up our local courts
system," Calzadilla said.

None of the arguments convinced Welch, who has fought passionately
for the law's passage.

Still, Welch granted to those in the room that the new measure was
not a cure-all for the problem of drug abuse or the availability of
drug paraphernalia.

"It's not going to solve the entire problem," he said. "It's a step
in the right direction."