EVERYDAY ITEMS OFTEN USED AS DRUG PARAPHERNALIA

When Jamie Nordan wanted a crack pipe, he needed only to walk into his
neighborhood convenience store.

Some stores are one-stop shopping for drug paraphernalia, no questions
asked. Small glass tubes with pea-size fake roses inside make for perfect
crack pipes - just take out the flower. The same stores stock scouring
pads, sometimes sold by the chunk, that users like for filters.

To addicts, some convenience stores around Fayetteville are just that:
convenient.

"When you smoke, you don't want to spend a lot of time in the store," said
Nordan, now in a recovery program at Hope Harbor Christian Mission. "You
want to go in quickly. Go in, get what you want to get and get out."

What seems like innocent gas-station merchandise to most customers is
actually easily attainable and legal drug paraphernalia. Users and police
officers know it. Much of the time, convenience store workers know it, too.

"It's very frustrating when you put your life on the line every day and go
out to try to make a dent in illegal drugs," said Fayetteville police Sgt.
David Pait, "and you walk into any convenience store which seems to be
promoting items that are used for drugs."

The glass-tubed roses are popular because they can withstand the heat
required to cook the crack cocaine with a lighter. The flame goes in one
end of the 4-inch tube, and the user smokes from the other end. With the
roses, the tubes are marketed as novelty gifts, sometimes prominently
displayed on store counters.

Most convenience stores also sell cheap cigars that are popular for
scraping out the tobacco and filling with marijuana, though cigars fall
under state tobacco laws that prohibit sales to minors. No law prevents
stores from selling the tubed roses to minors.

The Fayetteville Observer found those items and more at convenience stores
around the area. In a few hours, a reporter purchased glass tubes with
roses at four stores in Fayetteville, Spring Lake and Hoke County near the
Cumberland County line. They cost between $2 and $5.

Three stores kept the tubes on the counter or behind glass. In one store,
the tubes were hidden beneath the counter and were available only when the
reporter asked for one. At a Spring Lake store, the attendant said the
store didn't sell roses but referred the reporter - who made no mention of
drugs - to a display of small plastic bags, dime-size filter screens and
straight razors that were hanging near the cash register. The items can be
used to package and use drugs.

When asked where someone could buy a rose in a tube, the attendant referred
the reporter to Murchison Road.

Legal Lines

Such items are legal under state law as long as they're not sold
specifically for drug-related purposes. An object becomes illegal if one of
several factors fall into place, such as the proximity of the object to
drugs, the existence of drug residue, or instructions and advertising that
tell people how to use it illegally.

The law also considers an object to be paraphernalia when the seller
"reasonably should know" the buyer's illegal intentions.

But enforcing paraphernalia laws, or banning the sale of commonly used
objects, can be difficult. Many items that make good crack pipes have
everyday uses - a soda can, a toilet paper tube, a hollow antennae from a
car. The tubed roses, though perhaps not the most romantic gift, also are
protected under the law.

"Regulating something like that is going to be difficult, because it's
going to be used commonly for legitimate purposes," said Ed Childress, a
special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.

In some cities, activists and politicians have fought the sale of
questionable merchandise in convenience stores. A group in Seattle staged a
boycott and convinced gas corporations to have their stores stop selling
certain items, including the tubed roses.

Mike Roskind, a former Seattle police officer, formed the group in 2001
after growing worried by how many teens were buying paraphernalia for
methamphetamines at gas stations.

"You should not be marketing to my children in a place that is supposed to
be respectable," he said. "They went too far. This is where the line in the
sand was easily drawn."

Pressure on Stores

Police and sheriff's investigators here say there's little chance of
outlawing the sale of paraphernalia. Yet lawmen and some who are involved
in drug treatment programs say they wish stores would take the initiative
to stop selling the items. Some stores have already stopped - the Observer
found a few where attendants said they no longer stock the tubed roses. One
store manager, who declined to be interviewed, said her store stopped
selling the roses after she found out what they were used for.

"You've got to start somewhere," said Patsy Keisler, the residential case
manager at Hope Harbor. "I just don't think you're supposed to make it that
convenient for them."

Hope Harbor on Black and Decker Road offers an 18-month, live-in program
for men who are dependent on drugs and alcohol. Nordan, who used to buy
crack paraphernalia at convenience stores, and other former users say it
was common knowledge which stores sold paraphernalia. The tubed rose was
ideal because it was small, the glass could withstand heat, and it could be
used over and over.

Woody Inman, the recovery program manager at Hope Harbor, said the tubes
should be illegal.

"That's a crack pipe," he said. "I don't care what they put in it - a rose,
a turd. It's a crack pipe," Inman said. "You're going to find them in bad
neighborhoods, in neighborhoods where they sell dope. How many times do you
go in to buy a half of a Brillo pad at a gas station for cleaning? It
should be illegal to sell it that way."