DRUG PIPES SOLD OVER-THE-COUNTER TO Q-C TEEN

Your teen-ager and his friends come home with a drug pipe they bought at
the gas station down the street. What do you do?

A Davenport reader called last week to tell me how bitterly unhappy she was
to find a pot pipe on a friend of her 13-year-old son. She became even more
upset when she learned how the teens came to have it.

Her son's explanation about the drug paraphernalia being sold off gas
station countertops sounded so suspicious, the woman checked it out for
herself.

I checked it out, too. Turns out the kid had it right.

The kid's mom went straight to the Davenport Police Department when she
found out how easily kids can buy the pipes. At first, she said, she was
told that drug paraphernalia is illegal in Iowa, but the cops can't touch
the Davenport gas station owners who are selling it because -- get this --
the pipes are on key chains. Key chains make the fully operational pipes
novelty items.

On Friday, the woman said she'd spoken to someone in the city's legal
department who had a different opinion. The legal department told her that
a pipe is a pipe, and they are illegal.

Clearly, it depends on who you ask.

A secretary in the city legal department confirmed Friday that a city
attorney was looking into the pipes, but said he wasn't available.
Meanwhile, Davenport police Lt. Scott Sievert said police were making an
effort to get the pipes off the gas station shelves.

He said that a police officer talked to the owner of the Citgo station at
35th and Harrison streets, which is where the 13-year-old's buddy bought
his pipe. Sievert said that the owner was advised that some people were
trying to use the pipes for "illegitimate purposes."

The owner agreed last week to get rid of the pipes just as soon as he sold
out of the "three or four he had left" on the gas station counter, Sievert
said. On Thursday, I bought one of about a dozen of the pipes that were
readily available at the checkout.

Since the cops didn't make the Citgo owner get rid of the pipes ASAP, I've
got to assume that the teen's mom heard it right the first time, and the
so-called novelty items are considered legal.

My first thought was this: What's to keep them from dangling bottles of
Budweiser from key chains and selling those to teens? Or, why not just
eliminate the middleman and hang little joints off the chains?

So long as marijuana is illegal in this country, it makes sense that
materials used specifically for smoking the drug also are against the law.
I'm pretty sure you couldn't buy a still over the counter during
Prohibition. People had to make their own. Be resourceful.

But it's easy for kids in Davenport. The woman who originally called me
about the pipes has found another three gas stations in the city that sell
them.

"The message is, `Here, hang your house keys on this, boys and girls,' "
she said. "Of course, the schools wouldn't allow them, but police say
there's nothing they can do."

I find it ironic that taxpayers give police departments across this country
millions upon millions of dollars to spend on anti-drug campaigns, but
police can't do anything about the pot pipes that are being sold to
teenagers on street corners in Davenport.

But I have to say the part that bothers me most is the deceit. The
gas-station owners know what's on those key chains. The kids know. The
police know. But the gas station owners continue to make their $2.99 per
sale on pot pipes they're selling to teens.

How D.A.R.E they.