BUSTING RETAILERS: FAR OUT, MAN

To confiscate marijuana-smoking gadgets sold openly in two Wilmington
stores apparently required law-enforcement officers from the federal, state
and local levels.

Led by John Ashcroft's U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Frank
D. Whitney, intrepid officers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the State Bureau of
Investigation, the New Hanover County Sheriff's Department and the
Wilmington Police Department somehow managed to detect the presence of
dopey paraphernalia and seize it, from stores here and in Raleigh.

It was as if the massed forces of Eliot Ness had busted one of Al Capone's
speakeasies and confiscated the little umbrellas that went in the tropical
cocktails.

Of course, photos and video footage of cheesy smoke dispensers would look
good in campaign commercials, and probably will.

Americans are threatened by terrorists trying to murder us and destroy our
free institutions. We're threatened by killer drugs such as
methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin. And to be sure, it's said that the
marijuana on sale these days is much more powerful than the weed some
adults remember (or think they do) from their hippy-dippy days.

But terrorists and drug dealers are hard to find and convict. Retail clerks
whose dubious wares are on brazen display don't present quite so difficult
a challenge.

Fortunately, no officers were harmed in the making of this media event.