HEDLINE

Here's how easy it is to buy drug paraphernalia in Charlotte:

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I walked into a convenience store in the
Wilmore neighborhood.

"You have any of those glass tubes?" I asked the cashier.

"With the rose in it?"

"That's it."

He dipped his hand into a nondescript box behind the counter and grabbed a
thin, 4-inch glass tube with an artificial green rose inside.

"Let me have one of those Chore Boys, too," I said.

He turned around again and reached into a more decorative box, this one
filled with shiny copper scouring pads.

"Your total's $5.01."

The flowery glass tube (also called a vial or a stem) might look like an
overpriced novelty item. And the scouring pad might seem like just another
weapon in the fight against messy pots and pans.

But if I were a crack cocaine addict -- instead of a newspaper reporter
researching an article -- I'd rip off a small piece of scouring pad and
stuff it into the glass tube as a screen. Next, I'd stick a rock of crack in
one end of the tube, light it, then inhale through the other end.

Crack is the purest form of cocaine. And smoking it through a glass tube --
which stores buy for as little as 99 cents and sell for as much as $4.99 --
is the fastest way to get this notoriously addictive drug into the body.

Next month, the Charlotte City Council will vote on a proposed ordinance
that would give police officers the power to impose a $100-a-day fine on
stores that sell items likely to be used with illegal drugs.

Because store owners would be slapped with a civil penalty instead of a
criminal citation, police would have a lesser burden of proof. And the
officers would be given wide discretion -- considering everything from how
and where the item is displayed to a store owner's prior convictions -- in
deciding whether to impose a fine.

Who's pushing this initiative to let police get tough on stores that make
life convenient for drug users?

Not members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, though they
support the proposed ordinance.

Not Republican members of the council, though they're expected to vote for
it.

No, the sponsor is Council member Malachi Greene, a black Democrat. And the
force behind him are 23 minority neighborhood groups whose leaders say
residents are so angry about what drugs are doing to their communities that
they're willing to give police more power to do something about it.

"There are certain things we have allowed to just occur in our communities,"
says Mattie Marshall, president of the Washington Heights Neighborhood
Association. "We're at the point now where have to say: `This will no longer
be tolerated.' "

To get the money to buy drugs -- and drug paraphernalia -- many users rob
and steal. "So people are scared, especially our elderly people," says
Louise Sellers, president of the Biddleville/Five Points Neighborhood
Association. "They're scared to go into those stores. They're scared to go
to the health center. They're even scared to go to the bank -- they think
they might get robbed when they come out or they think the bank will be
robbed when they're still in it."

A recovering crack addict from Charlotte who calls herself "Miss D" says
passage of the ordinance "would be bad news for addicts" if police made it
difficult for them to buy the glass tubes.

"The glass stem gives you a cleaner high," says Miss D, who's 38 and stopped
using crack 2 1/2 years ago. "Some people might stop getting high if they
didn't have it."

But most wouldn't.

Not even the strongest supporters of the proposed ordinance are suggesting
it will wipe out drug abuse in these neighborhoods.

If glass tubes were suddenly unavailable, these supporters admit, most
addicts would simply fashion crack pipes from other everday items: a crushed
beer can, a small liquor bottle, a car antenna.

"This (ordinance) isn't going to eliminate anything, but it'll make it more
difficult for users and dealers," says Donnie Moore, neighborhood
coordinator for Fighting Back, the anti-drug group that mobilized the
neighborhood groups backing the proposal. "It'll alleviate some of the
pressures on the communities and give the police department another tool."

That word -- "tool" -- rankles Deborah Ross, executive/legal director of the
American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina. She says the proposed
ordinance is so vague that it could end up becoming a tool to target small
black businesses for selling items -- like baggies, often used to store
crack rocks -- that can also be found in the big grocery store chains.

"Is it a tool to intimidate people?" she asks. "Store owners don't know why
customers are buying those little baggies and they're not going to know. And
what if the police ask a (drug dealer), `Where did you get those baggies?'
and he says `Harris Teeter'? Are the police going to shut them down?"

The possibility of selective enforcement also worries Troy Watson,spokesman
for the C-Store Alliance, a group of 48 convenience stores in minority
neighborhoods.

He says drug addicts and dealers find new uses for a host of everyday
products -- aluminum foil, salt, baking soda, scouring pads -- that are
available in most stores, not just his members'.

"Show me how you're going to get Harris Teeter and Food Lion to stop selling
those things," he says.

The C-Store Alliance officially supports the proposed ordinance targeting
the selling of drug paraphernalia -- as long as it's enforced citywide.

Watson says his store owners "want to make sure the playing field is even.
They don't want the stores in the historically black neighborhoods to be the
only ones feeling the wrath of the police."

But it's the residents in those neighborhoods, not the police, who are
spearheading the drive to pass the ordinance. Most of the crack sold in
Charlotte is sold in their communities -- sometimes to people who come in
from other parts of town, sometimes to people who live next door.

"It makes it a scary place to live, a place where 6-year-olds see what's
going on," says Linda Williams, president of the Optimist Park Community
Association. "Maybe if these (drug paraphernalia) materials were not so
readily available, if you had to walk up to Food Lion or go five or 10
miles, it would help. Right now, it's right outside your front door.... I
think we should make it harder, a little more inconvenient for these people
who are buying and selling drugs."

As a member of the Citizens Police Academy, Williams has accompanied police
on drug busts, which routinely turned up items purchased inconvenience
stores.

"We found a lot of those Chore Boys (scouring pads)," she says. "People
weren't scrubbing that many pots 10 years ago.... These stores know what
they're doing."

Community policing has made black neighborhood leaders more trusting of
officers -- and more willing to give them more leeway in the fight against
drug-related crime.

"This is the late '90s ... not the '50s," says Eleanor Washington, president
of the University Park Neighborhood Association. "We've got the police to
watch over us now."

Two years ago, Washington felt the sting of crime firsthand when drug users
stole her car.

"We were at home," she says. "It was locked and in the carport." Police
later found it in a drug haven near Gaffney, S.C. "There was drug
paraphernalia in the car," Washington says.

Charlotte police say the ordinance, with its $100-a-day fine and lower
burden of proof, would make it easier to go after store owners who know how
the items they're selling are being used.

There's no state statute outlawing the sale of drug paraphernalia. Police
can arrest a store owner for "delivering" paraphernalia, but it's often a
tough case to win in court.

"The problem is proving it to the court beyond a reasonable doubt," says
Ernest Kirchin, an investigator in the vice and narcotics unit of the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. "You almost have to go in to the
store and say, `Sell me a crack pipe.' Who would say that but the police?
The employees in these stores are schooled. You ask them, `Is that a
marijuana pipe?' And they say, `No,that's for tobacco.' "

Even with the ordinance, Kirchin says, it would still be hard to impose a
fine based on the sale of items like scouring pads, which have a variety of
uses. But the ordinance -- modeled after laws enacted in Minneapolis,
Anchorage, Alaska, and Reno, Nev. -- would let police consider display,
packaging, proximity to other items, even the absence of some items.

"Do they sell rolling papers, but no tobacco?" says Kirchin. "Small baggies
but no jewelry? Pipes but no tobacco?"

As for the glass tubes with the roses inside, Kirchin says, "nobody has ever
been able to tell me a legitimate use for them."

Some convenience stores stopped selling the glass tubes a few years ago,
after neighborhood groups protested their sale. But other stores simply
moved them behind the counter. Still others restricted sales to those who
could supply a password or name.

"When I was using, I'd say a person's name -- `Teddy' -- or just a few
words, like `Fake make,' " says Miss D.

If the ordinance is passed, how would it be enforced?

Citywide, says Kirchin, though he acknowledges that most of the stores
selling the items covered would be near the streets where the drugs are
sold.

Kirchin envisions police asking those busted for possession of drugs where
they got the paraphernalia. "If they say, `I bought it in this store,'my
feeling is we'd go in that store and tell them, `You're on notice.' "

To Watson, spokesman for the 48 convenience stores, blaming a store for how
a customer uses -- or misuses -- a product is as ridiculous as blaming a
service station for selling gas to a hit-and-run driver.

"A store owner can't be responsible for how a customer uses salt, baking
soda or aluminum foil," he says.

But some stores appear to know they're selling drug paraphernalia. Why else
keep the flowery glass tubes hidden away, behind the counter? Why else
display most kitchen products on the shelves but store the Chore Boys
scouring pads behind the counter?

Michele Bennington, a neighborhood coordinator for Fighting Back, says her
hope is that the ordinance will encourage more stores to get out of the drug
paraphernalia business.

"Hopefully, the stores selling this stuff will pursue something good for the
neighborhoods -- like food!" she says. "Then they can go from being a blight
on the community to being an asset."