Yeah, the thing is there are many items that can be improvised in that way. Many crack smokers use coke cans to smoke that stuff. If the store owners know people are using these tubes to smoke crack then they should have the decency to stop selling them. I mean do they really need the extra money? I'am also curious about the response to this by the companies that make those flower tubes.
I don't think they can get arrested for buying them because they aren't real crack pipes. They just seem to be popular among crack addicts who turn them into crack pipes. I think the real issue is about doing more to fight the crack problem in certain areas. Even if they ban these tubes they will just use other things like the coke cans.
That's the whole problem with the drug war...People are going to do it anyways. WTF? They aren't stopping shit.
yea and lets ban glass eye droppers, glass bowls with attached stems, and coke cans, car antenas, glue, gasoline, turpintine, glass or ceramic lamps, tobacco pipes, apples or bananas that can be hallowed out and dried, lets ban tinfoil or wood that can be easily carved, lets get rid of those little button baggies that you can buy at craft stores or tap filters that can be used as a screen
dangermoose, Well I guess it's like this. In that clip I posted the clerks were arrested only when the under cover cops specificlly asked for a "crack pipe",then they were given a flower tube by the clerk. So I guess clerks can be arrested for selling some of those items you mentioned but only if they sell it to an under cover cop asking for them as drug tools.
what i think is funny is someone just now realized that crack smokers were the only ones buying these rose things. It's not like a new thing most people have known about it for a long while now and trying to change it will not do a thing except for drive users to be more inventive, amazing how inventive people become when they need a way to feed addiction. what's the saying necessity is the father of invention, mabe we should change it to addiction is the father of invention. there is no stopping the addicted what needs to be done is help those hooked on something like crack (don't matter how you feel about other "drugs" crack is dangerous) give them their pipes clean and put them in a sort of institution where they will be safe, harmless to other people, and let them live out their crack fantasy with available guidance to quit if they desire. maybe i'm wronge, but as long as they are kept away from the violence of the lifestyle and harming others i say givem' all the glass rose things they want.
Here's some good news about today's crack use. But perhaps the biggest surprise in the crack index is the fact that, as of 2000 -- the most recent year for which the index data are available -- Americans were still smoking about 70 percent as much crack as they smoked when consumption was at its peak. If so much crack is still being sold and bought, why aren't we hearing about it? Because crack-associated violence has largely disappeared. And it was the violence that made crack most relevant to the middle class. What made the violence go away? Simple economics. Urban street gangs were the main distributors of crack cocaine. In the beginning, demand for their product was phenomenal, and so were the potential profits. Most crack killings, it turns out, were not a result of some crackhead sticking up a grandmother for drug money but rather one crack dealer shooting another -- and perhaps a few bystanders -- in order to gain turf. But the market changed fast. The destructive effects of the drug became apparent; young people saw the damage that crack inflicted on older users and began to stay away from it. (One recent survey showed that crack use is now three times as common among people in their late 30's as it is among those in their late teens and early 20's.) As demand fell, price wars broke out, driving down profits. And as the amount of money at stake grew smaller and smaller, the violence also dissipated. Young gang members are still selling crack on street corners, but when a corner becomes less valuable, there is less incentive to kill, or be killed, for it. So how can it be that crack consumption is still so high? Part of the answer may have to do with geography. The index shows that consumption is actually up in states far from the coasts, like Arizona, Minnesota, Colorado and Michigan. But the main answer lies in the same price shift that made the crack trade less violent. The price has fallen about 75 percent from its peak, which has led to an interesting consumption pattern: there are far fewer users, but they are each smoking more crack. This, too, makes perfect economic sense. If you are a devoted crackhead and the price is one-fourth what it used to be, you can afford to smoke four times as much. But as crack has matured into a drug that causes less social harm, the laws punishing its sale have stayed the same. In 1986, in the national frenzy that followed the death of Len Bias, a first-round N.B.A. draft pick and a cocaine user, Congress passed legislation requiring a five-year mandatory sentence for selling just five grams of crack; you would have to sell 500 grams of powder cocaine to get an equivalent sentence. This disparity has often been called racist, since it disproportionately imprisons blacks. In fact, the law probably made sense at the time, when a gram of crack did have far more devastating social costs than a gram of powder cocaine. But it doesn't anymore. Len Bias would now be 40 years old, and he would have long outlived his usefulness to the Boston Celtics. It may be time to acknowledge that the law inspired by his death has done the same. LINK
