POLICE TAKE AIM AT GLASS PIPES

Drug Accessories Moving Off Shelves

The water pipe - or bong, as it's commonly known - cost $600 at Sugar
Daddy's Smoke Shop and had mouthpieces to accommodate six people
simultaneously.

Customers bought that pipe and others like it to smoke tobacco, said Rich
Franklin, who owns the Kenmore Square store.

"I sell everything for tobacco," he said, "and that's what everybody talks
about when they come in here - whether it's for water pipes, hand-held
ones, or dry pieces."

The police aren't buying that explanation, though, and for now, nobody will
be buying bongs at Sugar Daddy's.

"They are selling pipes and other products used for smoking marijuana and
other drugs, and it's in violation of general laws," said Boston Detective
Sergeant Daniel Linskey, who is leading an effort to stop stores he calls
"head shops" from selling items that police believe are used with illicit
substances.

"From my 17 years in drug enforcement, what the owners were selling is drug
paraphernalia," Linskey said of the three stores police have visited so
far, "and I think they're being disingenuous if they're [saying] otherwise."

In the past few weeks, Boston police have told the owners of Sugar Daddy's
and two other businesses to clear their shelves of pipes that could be used
to smoke marijuana and other illegal drugs - or risk arrest and the seizure
of property. Linskey said he could have arrested the owners on the spot,
"but I didn't want to be unreasonable."

Although Linskey said the crackdown began after he happened upon one of the
stores while checking security in the city during the war in Iraq, the
enforcement comes on the heels of national efforts to curtail the drug
paraphernalia industry. Linskey would not say whether the local initiative
would spread beyond Sugar Daddy's, Hempest on Newbury Street, and Buried
Treasures on Haviland Street, all of which carried a large inventory of
such products.

State law prohibits the sale of paraphernalia "under circumstances where
one reasonably should know that it will be used to ... store, contain,
conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce into the human body
a controlled substance."

But owners and employees at the three businesses said the products are
intended for legal purposes only.

"This law goes too far," said Franklin, who has cut staff and reduced his
hours ever since Sugar Daddy's was the first store ordered to remove the
alleged drug paraphernalia. "I can't be held responsible for people using
these for other things that's not to my knowledge."

Some items at the store cost up to $4,500, he said, and "are so beautiful
they belong in the Museum of Fine Arts."

Franklin said he's "wicked strict" in making sure customers aren't buying
his products for illegal purposes, and added that his store is considering
challenging the police order in court.

"I am angry and so are my customers," said Renwick Samms, manager of Buried
Treasures, where employees have put up additional signs reminding customers
about the intended use of the products being sold.

Still, visits by customers to the small back room have decreased since
police issued the order. Behind the hanging beads, and inside the glass
case, the black velvet shelves are now lined with glass candies, cloth
wallets, and shiny lighters, instead of the pipes that drew customers such
as Mike Pham of Worcester.

"This is so bad. It must be the Bush administration," said Pham, who threw
up his hands in dismay after finding that the pipes had been removed. A
20-something wearing a blue, button-down shirt and yellow tie, Pham said he
would have to travel to the suburbs now to shop. He sighed and walked out
empty-handed.

At Hempest, where glass pipes that sell for between $10 and $1,000 make up
about 10 percent of the business, the owners have gathered hundreds of
signatures for a petition calling for glass pipes to be exempted from the
state ban on drug paraphernalia. Despite the police order, the store still
had some glass pipes on display, although fewer than before the officers
visited.

"This is just silly. Pipes have existed for thousands of years," said owner
Jon Napoli.

All the businesses have been operating for at least seven years, and owners
said this is the first time their products have been challenged by the police.

Although Linskey said his efforts to curb head shop activity sprang from an
antiterrorism patrol of Kenmore Square, where he "happened to discover
Sugar Daddy's, who then told me about the Hempest," the local crackdown
follows national initiatives. In late February, federal authorities charged
55 people in 10 states with trafficking illegal drug paraphernalia as part
of Operation Pipe Dreams. Among those arrested were 17 owners and employees
of head shops in Idaho and Eastern Oregon. US Attorney General John
Ashcroft also has announced four indictments against national distributors
of drug paraphernalia in Michigan, California, and Texas as part of another
investigation, Operation Head Hunter.

"National, state, and local law enforcement agencies across the country
have determined that drug paraphernalia is something that needs to be
addressed if we're going to make the drug problem smaller," said Scott
Burns, a deputy director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Steven Epstein, a founder and treasurer of the Massachusetts Cannabis
Reform Coalition, sharply criticized what he viewed as an attack by Boston
police on legal businesses. He also rejected the police characterization of
the stores as head shops, and said at least two are licensed by the state
to sell tobacco products.

Epstein, a lawyer who is representing Sugar Daddy's, said the laws that
define drug paraphernalia are convoluted, and he's concerned that police
"can threaten tobacconists with the loss of valuable inventory simply
because the police believe the owner knew, or should have known, one of the
customers was going to use it to smoke pot or crack."

Linskey disagreed, saying the laws are very clear.

Not all customers may grasp the nuances of drug paraphernalia laws, however.

Bryan Such, a longtime customer of Buried Treasures and a recent part-time
worker at the store, said some young adults "come in and use drug
references which we don't approve here at all. It's almost like they think
it's a safety zone, and laws don't apply to us. But they do."