IT'S A DREAM OF GETTING RID OF PIPES

DURHAM - A coalition of Durham residents is fighting drug use in
their neighborhoods by pressuring convenience store owners to stop
selling crack pipes thinly veiled as novelty gifts.

Marketed as a "Rose in a Glass" or "Love Roses," the product is a
4-inch-long glass tube with a tiny fake flower stuffed inside. Blow
out the flower and the tempered glass tube, called a "stem" on the
street, is perfect for smoking rocks of crack cocaine.

Over the past week, members of Operation Pipe Dreams have visited 31
stores in Durham -- covertly buying the tubes and then giving those
behind the counter a letter asking them to stop selling the item. If
they refuse, the letter promises the group will pressure public
officials to suspend the shop's license to sell beer and wine. It is
illegal in North Carolina to sell drug paraphernalia.

Most of the merchants targeted so far are locally owned, mom-and-pop
operations clustered in the low-income neighborhoods on Durham's east
side. Members of Operation Pipe Dreams plan to expand their crusade
to shops in Southeast Raleigh today.

"This isn't just a Durham problem. It's a statewide problem," said
the Rev. Melvin Whitley, the associate minister of Durham's Ebenezer
Missionary Baptist Church and a leader of the operation. "These
stores are aiding and abetting misery. They are putting profit ahead
of community."

Whitley said the tubes are imported from China and sold through a
local wholesaler for 18 cents each. The small neighborhood stores
then resell them at a substantial markup, usually for about $3. The
stems often are made readily available with two other items needed to
smoke crack -- cheap disposable lighters and copper scouring pads
that, when cut into small pieces, are stuffed into the tubes as a
makeshift filter.

Whitley said he was able to buy the product at a store a couple of
blocks from his home, even though the shopkeeper knew him personally.
Asked why he would sell a crack pipe to a man of the cloth, the clerk
responded that it wasn't his place to judge. Another store owner said
he couldn't stop selling the pipes because it would put him at a
competitive disadvantage, but he agreed to discount the inflated price.

"He just didn't get it," Whitley said. "That'll hurt your spirit."

Operation Pipe Dreams did appear to be having an effect in the Bull
City on Thursday, even if just to push the sale of stems out of the open.

At Atlantic Food Mart on Angier Avenue, next door to a small Baptist
church, a clerk cloistered behind a wall of bullet-resistant glass
told a reporter they no longer sold the tubes.

A block away at the M&M Mart, the clerk spontaneously lost the
ability to speak English when asked about Love Roses. At the Quick
Mart on Briggs Avenue, owner Sam Jaber acknowledged that he had sold
the pipes in the recent past but couldn't say exactly when he
stopped. He claimed he didn't know the Love Roses were used to smoke
crack until Whitley told him.

"It's high profit, but it's not worth it," Jaber said. "I support a
clean East Durham."

As Jaber spoke from behind the counter, a wide array of
fruit-flavored, pre-hollowed-out cigar wrappers commonly used for
assembling marijuana "blunts" was displayed on a shelf behind him. He
claimed not to know what those were used for, either.

Whitley is skeptical of shop owners who claim ignorance of the tube's
true use, rather than its disguise as a romantic gesture.

"I don't know too many women who would accept one," Whitley said of
the Love Roses. "If I brought one home to my wife, I'd be living in a
shed out back."

A.B. Turner, the owner of Community Grocery on North Guthrie Avenue,
was more forthcoming. He said that he knows the pipes are used to
smoke crack and that he intends to keep selling them -- though he
claimed not to have any in stock Thursday.

"It's common sense," Turner said. "Ain't nobody going to pay $3 for a
little glass tube unless they have a use for it."