Busting distributors of glass pipes does nothing
to stop marijuana consumption
By Mary Jane
Earlier this year, Operation Pipe Dreams managed to wreak havoc on glass
pipe sales both in stores and online. The information that government
organizations have seized as a result of this includes extensive lists
of visitors to the websites that once sold products that John Ashcroft
claims are exclusively used to smoke marijuana. Whether or not the glass
pipes were used to smoke marijuana is not the issue; what is important
is that our federal government is spending agencies' valuable time and
money on their vow to shut down the producers of paraphernalia.
There is one major problem with the movement to rid the United States of
marijuana smoking devices, and that is the fact that almost anything can
be manipulated in order to allow the user to toke up. Just as Woody
Harrelson likes to play the game "Name Something That Can't be Made of
Hemp," I'd now like to play the game "Name Something You Can't Turn Into
A Smoking Device."
No household will be safe from drug raids if it stocks both toilet paper
and aluminum foil, since aluminum foil can be made into a simple bowl,
which can then fit into the cardboard tube left over when you've used up
all your TP. Restaurants around the country will be shut down if they
have plastic honey bears or ketchup bottles, for once a hole is punched
in the plastic and something like aluminum (maybe from the top of a
wholesome single serving of Smackers Jam) placed as a makeshift bowl,
you can be smoking out the senior citizens buffet at your neighborhood
Honeys.
Perhaps next our federal government should go after companies like Coke
and Pepsi, whose cans, once folded slightly with holes punched in the
fold, quickly become portable, disposable smoking devices. And while the
government is at it, they can shut down all major bottling companies
that use plastic, because like the honey bear, any plastic device with
an opening for a human mouth can be turned into a pipe or bong.
Let's not forget the produce industry, because the simple act of coring
any sort of fruit or vegetable and poking a hole in the side turns a
wholesome American meal into a hedonistic (not to mention organic) pipe.
Other, more obscure companies, like those who make fish tanks and those
who make large jugs for drinking water machines in offices will soon all
be raided and busted once the Feds find out how exactly it is those
pesky potheads can make gravity bongs once they get their hands on some
tubing.
And this is all with the exclusion of grow rooms, where the real problem
starts. Our federal government might as well just go ahead and shut down
every hardware store in the country, because it's one-stop shopping for
the evil marijuana growers.
The argument that people are going to always smoke pot doesn't hold up
so well when it's the cornerstone of a legalization debate, but a
variation of it should be the very reason our government devotes its
time and energy to more important resources (anyone heard about Bin
Laden lately?) No matter who you bust and what product you ensure can no
longer be distributed, those who want to smoke are going to find a way.
And if all the supermarkets, hardware stores, restaurants, and bottling
companies are shut down, all a stoner has to do is go buy a cigar or an
old-fashioned tobacco pipe and they're in business. Operation Pipe
Dreams and the line of logic behind it has no other fate but to go up in
smoke.
