RAIDS PUT DRUG-PARAPHERNALIA TRAFFICKERS OUT OF BUSINESS

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 -- Federal officials said today that they had shut down
the biggest drug-paraphernalia suppliers in the United States in a series
of nationwide raids.

In all, charges were brought against 55 people who prosecutors said had
trafficked in everything from lipstick-shaped marijuana pipes to gas masks
that can double as bongs.

Drug paraphernalia, once the province of neighborhood "head shops," has
exploded into a billion-dollar industry in which suppliers use the Internet
to sell their wares with little fear of prosecution, the officials said.

They said the raids announced today had resulted in the seizure of
thousands of tons of such products, some of which are used by traffickers
to help produce drugs for resale, others by users to conceal drugs. The
seized items included drug pipes hidden in school highlighters, soft-drink
cans and lipstick cases, officials said.

The 55 people charged, most in Pennsylvania and California, were named in
nearly three dozen indictments spanning the country. Most of the defendants
have been taken into custody, though the authorities are searching for a few.

The authorities also said they were shutting down 11 Web sites with names
like "smokelab.com" that they said had been used to sell paraphernalia. Any
people trying to use such a site today, officials said, were supposed to be
forwarded to a Drug Enforcement Administration site informing them that the
paraphernalia dealer was out of business. But most of those sites were
still up and running hours after the indictments.

Federal law makes it a crime to sell drug paraphernalia, which is defined
as any product "primarily intended or designed" to aid in the
manufacturing, concealing or ingesting of a controlled substance. Marijuana
pipes, roach clips, cocaine freebase kits, miniature scales and tools for
cutting or diluting raw drugs are all considered banned, officials said.

Though the crime has rarely attracted the interest of law enforcement
officials in the past, Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that the
Justice Department had decided to open a multiagency undercover operation
after a recent case in Pittsburgh pointed to the depth of the problem.

Some groups critical of the Bush administration's drug policies questioned
whether at a time of heightened national security concerns, the department
was wasting its resources on a fairly obscure corner of the
drug-trafficking industry. But Mr. Ashcroft, joined at a news conference by
officials from the D.E.A. and the White House, said the ease with which
young people could get their hands on paraphernalia was a growing concern
to him and others in the administration.

"This is a federal case," the attorney general said, "because it's against
the federal law."

Mary Beth Buchanan, the United States attorney for western Pennsylvania,
whose office led part of the investigation, said that raids around the
country had netted "thousands and thousands of tons" of paraphernalia and
that investigators were still working to catalog the seizures. Some of the
raided businesses manufactured the paraphernalia themselves, using
glass-blowing facilities and kilns at warehouses, she said.

Revenue for suppliers named in the indictments reached as high as $50
million a year each, Ms. Buchanan said. With the raids, she added,
prosecutors believe they have put all the major paraphernalia suppliers in
the United States out of business.

Those charged face up to three years in prison if convicted, along with
fines of up to $250,000.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York
group that favors liberalizing drug laws and legalizing marijuana, saw the
indictments as part of a broader effort by the Bush administration to crack
down on marijuana, even for medicinal purposes.

"It's a wasteful and tragic use of resources," Mr. Nadelmann said.

One law enforcement specialist, Eric E. Sterling, president of the Criminal
Justice Policy Foundation in Silver Spring, Md., also questioned why top
law enforcement officials were spending time dealing with drug
paraphernalia. Moreover, he said, the crackdown could do unintended damage
to public health.

"Sweeps like this are very likely to intimidate people who provide sterile
needles as a much-approved public health measure," Mr. Sterling said.
"They'll be afraid to be mistaken for illegal purveyors of paraphernalia."