The Boston City Council has proposed a ban on the sale of “four-inch glass tubes featuring fake mini-roses” commonly sold at convenience stores, because they’re actually crack pipes. From BostonNow:

They look like novelty items, but they’re not. For sale at convenience stores in Boston, four-inch glass tubes featuring fake mini-roses inside of them are actually crack pipes.

BostonNOW’s reporter entered a Blue Hill Avenue store yesterday afternoon, asked the clerk for a “straight shooter,” and received the glass tube, flower and a steel wool pad (to be used as a filter when smoking crack).

In response to situations like these, City Councilor Chuck Turner and other councilors, including Felix Arroyo and Michael Flaherty, have filed an ordinance to prohibit the sale of these pipes, also known as “rosebuds” or “stems.”

“As a community, we need to work together on issues of drugs and violence,” said Turner. “The business community needs to work with us as well. We have to find many creative ways to lessen the use of drugs.”

“For young people to see [crack pipes] so openly in stores, they think it’s acceptable,” said Arroyo, “and it is not.”

The ordinance, if passed, would call for a $300 fine to both stores who sell the crack pipes and people possessing them. —MEGHANN MARCO

Crack pipes come easy at convenience stores [Boston NOW]

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