CRACK PIPES FOR SALE IN MANY SHOPS

With a nudge and a wink, some clerks at mini-markets in Delaware
reach under the counters and sell customers all the gear they need to
smoke crack cocaine and marijuana.

For about a dollar, anyone can buy a miniature "love rose" packaged
inside a little glass tube -- then dump the fake flower and use the
tube as a crack pipe. For another 50 cents, he can buy a tiny piece
of scouring pad. Just a corner of a regular-size pad, it is far too
small to scrub dishes, but it's the perfect size to stick into the
pipe as a screen and filter.

Residents who live near stores that sell such makeshift drug
paraphernalia say the shops attract drug-addled loiterers who, at
best, are loud and unruly. Worse yet, the people who come to buy the
drug gear could be armed and violent, making the variety stores
dangerous places for families or children stopping in for drinks and snacks.

Some merchants feign ignorance. The roses could be purchased for a
lover or friend and the bits of cut-up scouring pad could be used by
people getting ready to wash dishes, they say.

Police know better. But stopping the sale of such items is difficult,
they say. Enforcing Delaware's paraphernalia law requires proof that
the sellers know the items will be used in connection with drugs.
That connection is often difficult to make.

"We all know what most of this stuff is being used for, but no
merchant is going to say, 'Hey, do you want to buy any of this to
smoke your cocaine with?' " Wilmington police spokesman William Wells
said. "I wish it was that easy, but it's not."

In addition to being tricky to prosecute, paraphernalia peddlers are
not as high a priority to police departments as drug traffickers.
Nonetheless, authorities have managed to make some arrests for
paraphernalia distribution this year.

Eliazar Gomez, the operator of the Quisqueya Deli Grocery, at 1201 W.
Fourth St. in Wilmington, was accused of selling bulk quantities of
small plastic bags and vials in July. The different-sized bags were
on display in the store.

City Communications Director John Rago said the volume of the bags
and vials allowed the police -- with the help of a confidential
informant -- to build a case that the items were being sold for more
than storing coins and beads. Gomez was placed in a one-year
diversion program for first-time offenders.

In April, state troopers used a federal paraphernalia law to bust
operators of a "head shop" in Dover for selling smoking masks, roach
clips, digital scales and urine-cleansing kits. Teragwens Leather
Toys and Lace, at 1044 S. Du Pont Highway, was operating as a
lingerie and sex-toy store, U.S. Attorney Colm Connolly said.
Hundreds of bongs and pipes that authorities allege are used to smoke
marijuana were seized from the store. Robert Cooke, 47, of Dover, and
Gwennette Bowman, 50, and Kenneth Bowman, 50, both of Georgetown,
were charged. Their trial is pending.

The problem is so bad in Wilmington that Councilman Theo Gregory is
trying to pass a law that would close convenience stores and gas
stations from midnight to 4 a.m. daily in an effort to bring calm to
neighborhoods. He realizes that the law flies in the face of the
city's effort to shed its image as a place where downtown shuts its
doors at 5 p.m. But the fact that convenience stores sometimes sell
paraphernalia was a driving force behind his bill, he said, because
the items draw a disorderly crowd.

Rolling papers, cigars

Some stores across Delaware just sell rolling papers and
fruit-flavored cigars. While each is legal on its own, police say the
cigars often are used by pot smokers, who replace the tobacco with marijuana.

At the Country Farms Food Store on Del. 896 in Glasgow, a display
case near the cash register this week had small glass and ceramic
pipes on one shelf and a $125 electronic scale on the next. A lower
shelf held Pokemon and NFL trading cards, which are popular with
young children.

The employee who worked there would not give her name. She said she
thought the pipes were used for tobacco and said she didn't know what
the scale could be used for. She said the operator of the store was
in India tending to funeral arrangements for his mother.

"We don't know what people do with this stuff after they buy it," the
woman said.

In Wilmington, Bass' Sow General Store at the southeast corner of
Fifth and Madison streets sells the love roses and small pieces of
scouring pad -- although neither product is openly displayed and
customers must ask for them. A clerk, who would not identify herself,
said the store sells lots of the roses and scrubbers together.

The store is on the corner where 14-year-old Bakeem Mitchell was shot
and killed in October 2004.

At the New Garden Restaurant, a Chinese takeout-only place on Gov.
Printz Boulevard across from the notorious Riverside housing project,
neither roses nor scrubbers were displayed for sale, but an employee
produced both items and began bagging them when asked if they were
for sale there.

Some merchants say they do not sell any of the paraphernalia. Hani
Mohamid, who works at Sharman Mini Market at Washington Street and
Concord Avenue in Wilmington, said selling drug items isn't good for
a family store.

Wilmington City Council members pressured Mohammed Chowdhury to stop
selling the paraphernalia at Bill's Meat Market, his store at 10th
and Pine streets, near where 45-year-old Sharon Blake was gunned down
on her doorstep last year by a man with a drug history.

Chowdhury did what the council asked -- and was honored at a council
meeting for his decision. He said he has not gone back to selling the
items, even though his competitors nearby do. A visit to his store
this week showed that the market was one of the few in Wilmington
without flavored cigars for sale.

He said the decision might cost him his business, however.

"The recognition from the council was nice, but people now go to
other stores to buy their milk and juice because they can get their
blunts there, too," he said.

Sold throughout state

Capt. Chip Simpson, commander of the Delaware State Police special
investigations division, said drug paraphernalia is sold at markets
in all three counties in the state.

Devon Hynson, 33, of Northeast Wilmington, said he would like to see
more police attention paid to enforcing drug-paraphernalia laws.

"I think the drug problem gets worse when the pipes and blunts are so
accessible," he said. "In a way, the people that sell the
paraphernalia are in cahoots with the drug dealers."

Councilwoman Stephanie T. Bolden, chairwoman of the council's public
safety committee, agreed. "It's unbelievable what is sold in these
stores in support of the drug trade," she said. "We have to eliminate it."

Fellow City Council member Gregory would like to see police inspect
the small stores more often.

"I'd like to see them incorporate it into their daily routines," he
said. "When they stop for gum, soda, sandwiches or cigarettes, they
should look for all this other stuff."

Recently retired police Inspector James Wright said he regularly
inspected stores in Wilmington. When he found obvious paraphernalia,
he'd ask the merchant to stop selling it, with mixed results. Wells,
the police spokesman, said such efforts to pressure the store owners continue.

"We just try to get them to stop, but it's such an easy buck to sell
the blunts for $1," he said.

"A lot of them say that they won't stop until the other nearby stores
do," Bolden said. "My response is that somebody has to be the first
if we want to make things better, and maybe everybody else will follow suit."

Wilmington Police Chief Michael Szczerba said he would like to see
better laws, including one that would define small plastic bags as
paraphernalia.

"But even though the current laws are tough to have stick, we can't
leave our common sense at the door," he said. "Yes, there are legal
things that these items could be used for, but we have to look hard
for connections to the drug trade when we have the opportunity."