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The average person assumes that these rosepipes are meant as a simple and quick gift a guy might buy for his girlfriend while he is in the store getting something else. But the typical rose buyer is a man that buys a 40-ounce bottle of beer and a Chore Boy scouring pad which he later uses as a screen for his newly made “stem," a street name for a crack pipe. Some store owners know exactly what these rosepipes are used for. In 1998, an Arizona clerk told an Arizona Republic columnist that she know the rosepipes were used for crack pipes, “addicts bought them regularly she told them. In order to dodge the laws that prohibit the sale of drug paraphernalia, workers at the convenience stores were told not to sell rosepipes if the customer referenced them as 'crack pipes', the code between the buyer and seller became asking to buy a flower."
A case in Palm Beach County targeting a Mr. Beverage store tried a clerk on charges of selling a rose, along with a copper scouring sponge to an undercover officer. The jury heard an audiotape of the officer asking the clerk if he could purchase a crack pipe. The clerk corrected the undercover officer by saying “We don’t call it that. We sell roses.” The clerk’s attorney argued in the clerk’s defense that the undercover officer pointed to items in the store during the buy, which became “leading” his client. The clerk was later acquitted. In April 2000, the Michigan Liquor Control Commission told merchants that “love roses’ or “rosepipes’ do qualify as narcotics paraphernalia and any licensee who is using, storing, exchanging or selling them will be cited with an MLCC violation. But Marjorie Kelly, editor of Business Ethics magazine in Minneapolis said that the rosepipes create a “muddy” situation for store owners. “Simply selling a store product that is not used as it was intended, I don’t think a store owner has an obligation to stop selling it,” she said. Children have sniffed glue to get high for decades she also noted. Should stores stop selling glue?
Gordon James Knowles, an assistant sociology professor at Hawaii Pacific University did research on the crack cocaine scene in Honolulu’s Chinatown while studying for his doctrine in 1996. From the addicts he observed and interacted with he learned that the addicts bought “crack kits” from convenience stores. For $8.50, the store owner pulled out a brown paper bag with a 4-inch glass tube and some copper mesh. The tube was rose-less and the kits were stashed under the counter in a hidden location. In his publication “Deception, Detection and Evasion: A Trade Craft Analysis of Honolulu, Hawaii’s Secret Crack Cocaine Traffickers, Knowles wrote “Legitimate businesses are shown to have capitalized on crack addiction by marketing and distributing drug paraphernalia related to crack cocaine consumption.”
With store owners (see picture below) that indefinitely know what rosepipes are used for are immigrant convenience store owners that have no idea what the street culture in Ameirca is like and mimics a competitor convenience store's supply thinking that if his competitor has this product in his store it must make money for him. In that situation, the store owner was lacking in information but if he purposely bought rosepipes knowing that they are later going to be used as crack pipes, the store owner is doing something wrong. What separates him from being in the drug trade? Gas is needed to drive a car just like an object is needed to smoke crack. Rosepipes have become a glamorous crack smoking device in the streets, instead of using a light bulb that the addict screwed off a porch light or a soda can. Even though this surfaced almost 10 years ago, stores continue to sell them and the cases go back and forth from court to court. The best way to get stores from selling them is by having residents’ protests against the product and boycott the stores selling drug paraphernalia. This can be achieved through awareness programs stemming from the internet; pop-up ads or banners exposing this issue. To magazines ads similar to anti-drug and tobacco. And television commercials like the The Truth or quick public service announcements.
1 comment:
Dear DMVK,
Thanks for an interesting post on a controversial topic. Issues dealing with illegal narcotics are often difficult to present, and I think you did a very good job. It is clear that you researched your post and put some effort into publishing your findings.
However, I think your post could have benefited from a few changes, some stylistic and some content-based. Firstly, I think a few grammar changes, such as word choice and punctuation usage, would make the post flow better, and sustain reader interest. Also, I feel like you could have used the links in your post better. For example, in paragraph two, you cite an article in the Arizona Republic, yet the link goes to a general page on news about Phoenix, not the specific article. Lastly, I think making your images slightly larger (and linking to where you found them), would greatly increase the quality of your post. On the other hand, I want to note that you do an excellent job labeling your posts so the reader can best find other posts on similar topics.
Regarding the content of your post, I feel that you provide strong evidence to support your argument against the use of this specific type of crack pipe. However, as I stated previously, I think the fact that the effectiveness of your argument is significantly weakened by the improper grammar. For example, in the final paragraph, the first sentence reads, “With store owners (see picture below) that indefinitely know what rosepipes are used for to immigrant convenience store owners that have no idea what the street culture does and mimics a competitors supply thinking that if that owner has this product in his store so it must make money for him.” I think that this sentence could have much more impact upon the reader if you reworded it, adding some punctuation, and perhaps made it into two sentences. There is no one right answer; I just feel that making some changes would improve your work.
Additionally, in the final paragraph, I feel that your conclusion is not strong enough, and somewhat confusing. I do not understand the comparison of needing gas to drive a car to needing drug paraphernalia to smoke. In order to improve this paragraph, I would do something like expanding on what you say in your final two sentences, about how to ban the product. If you wrote about that aspect, there is so much information you could address. For example, is it justifiable to ban this item, if its designed use is legal? It is said that people can make bombs out of items bought at the drug store, but those items are not banned. I think your citation of the glue issue is a fantastic example that could also be explored in more details (on a somewhat different note, placing a link to where you found her opinions would also improve your post). It seems that you reference this type of discussion, but I would like to see more of your personal opinions.
Anyways, thanks for a great post.
Thank for readings,
-mhs, http://lawandsports.blogspot.com
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