Source: The Vancouver Province
Contact: sunletters@pacpress.southam.ca

Needlelike novelty pencil is no `joke'

By: Judy Swanson, Staff Reporter

Bob Ogiltree wants to warn parents about a hypodermicneedle pencil
that's being sold to kids in at least one store in Vancouver's West
End.

The mechanical pencils filled with colored fluid in blue, yellow,
green, purple and red are slightly larger than an actual needle but
are virtually identical to the real thing.

``I'm horrified these things are being sold as jokes and novelties,''
Ogiltree said yesterday. ``If parents know it's out there, they will
be watching for it.

``It's a fake rig (a colloquial street term for hypodermic needles).

``Are we teaching kids it's OK to run around with a hypodermic needle
on their person?'' said the father of two grown daughters. ``I know
for certain I wouldn't have wanted my daughters to come home with
that.''

Ogiltree, general manager of Street News, formerly Spare Change
Newsmagazine, said he saw two girls about 12 years old checking out
the pencils on the weekend at the Super 99 Centre on Davie Street.

The mother of one of the girls refused to buy one, but Ogiltree
overheard the girls say: ``We'll come back later it's only $1.29.''

The Province visited the Davie Street shop and found a display of the
pencils threequarters of which had already been sold.

A clerk who identified herself only as Lydia said the items posed no
problem.

``We've been selling them since last month,'' she said. ``I don't
think it's that serious. It's just for fun. It depends on how you
think.''

She said her store is not the only one selling them.

But Ogiltree said the needles ``are just too dangerous to be playing
games with.''

He said he was even more upset at the prospect of kids finding a real
used syringe on the street and thinking it was a harmless pencil.

He also pointed out that the pencils could be used as a weapon. ``In a
dark alley, it looks real,'' he said.