Pubdate: Mon, 03 Oct 2005
Source: News-Record, The (WY)
Copyright: 2005 The News-Record
Contact:  http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2504
Author: James Warden
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

PROMOTING DRUGS OR JUST FREE SPEECH?

GILLETTE (AP) -- Just off the Douglas Highway, a blanket with what appears 
to be a marijuana leaf is hung up for sale.

Blocks away, a store that once sold elaborate, brightly colored pipes has 
been shut down.

Across town, novelty stores sell hats, mugs, T-shirts and other merchandise 
that appear to advertise marijuana.

Sellers of such items say their products are only what customers make of 
them, but others say the drug-associated knickknacks perpetuate substance 
abuse in a city that's already facing a methamphetamine crisis.

Victoria Moren, owner of M+M Imports, is used to taking flak for the 
blankets she sells outside her stores. Designs such as a Confederate flag 
or a Corona bottle often attract attention, but it's the one that resembles 
a marijuana leaf that draws the most fire.

A police officer stopped by and asked her to stop displaying it outside her 
store since it promoted drugs, although he told her it was not against the 
law to do so.

Moren rejects the accusation that she is promoting marijuana. She calls the 
design a slightly altered version of the Canadian maple leaf and said the 
company who sells it calls it "The New Canadian Flag."

"I felt offended by (the officers request). It's just a blanket," she said. 
"It's not like you can do anything with the blankets."

Sellers sometimes face more than just bad feelings.

On July 28, Jeffrey Doles took more than $7,000 that he saved while in 
prison and started The Hip Hop Hippie, a store that sold pipes and other 
smoking products that police said were made for marijuana.

Officers shut the store down Aug. 10 and seized nearly all the stores 
products. Doles was arrested two days later when he reopened the store with 
the same types of products that police originally confiscated.

Doles, however, says you can't call something a marijuana pipe unless 
there's marijuana in it. To emphasize that his products aren't intended for 
drug use, he hung up brightly colored signs telling customers that the 
store doesn't sell drug paraphernalia.

"We do not sell drug paraphernalia!!!," the signs read. "All of our 
accessories are intended for use with legal substances only. Any discussion 
regarding the illegal use of these products will result in you being asked 
to leave! Thank you!!!"

Added Doles: "No one has ever called these pipes narcotics pipes. (Police) 
are the only ones who have criminalized these pipes. I don't care what you 
smoke in it. I'm selling smoking accessories."

Sheriffs Sgt. Steve Hamilton said it's disingenuous to claim that such 
merchandise wasn't intended for drugs. He thinks it's ironic that people 
would endorse items with few legal uses at a time when there's a move 
toward more control over legitimate products like pseudoephedrine, a meth 
precursor drug used in some cold medicines that many states regulate.

"It's an insult to the intelligence of the average person," Hamilton said.

Doles disagreed. To make his case, he talks about a color-changing pipe 
that he bought from a company whose catalogs proclaim "All of your tobacco 
needs."

"It's exactly like your grandpa's tobacco pipe, only a 2005 version of it," 
Doles said.

But his neighbors aren't buying it.

Teresa Lish owns Year Round Brown, a tanning salon one store over from the 
Hip Hop Hippie. While Lish acknowledges that some of Doles customers 
probably did use his products for tobacco, she said the store attracted 
many more questionable clients. Their appearance was such, she said, that 
she had dead bolts put on the store's back door.

"If you're selling bongs and stuff like that, you're going to get people 
who use marijuana," she said.

Many people object to the location, as well. Ginger Uran is the owner of 
Tinker Tots, a child-care center for infants to 5-year-olds that sits just 
in front of Dole's store.

Lish said parents were concerned when they learned The Hip Hop Hippie had 
opened. Loud music and cars from the store's customers didn't do anything 
to ease their fears.

"When they were shut down, we were happy," she said.

Moren, though, said her blankets are different. They are harmless and don't 
have any such illegal uses, she said. Her clients are also diverse. Often 
she has well-dressed customers buy one of the leaf blankets.

Hamilton is quick to say he supports the free speech behind the products.

"There is certainly no problem as an example to all of us of the free 
speech portion of the Constitution," he said. "While this is not a 
statement I would like to make, I would support free speech."

However, he said the blankets were harmful in their own way: 
Marijuana-emblazened merchandise promotes a criminal act, and a medically 
risky one as well, in addition to reflecting on the person using the product.

"Too many people don't understand that these statements are a measure of 
the person making the statement," he said.

Moren concedes that she's sometimes uncomfortable selling the blankets. 
Once a teenager bought a couple of blankets and sold them to his friends 
for a profit and then came back to buy more. And her 10-year-old and 
4-year-old children have asked about them, prompting her to watch more 
closely whom she sells them to.

"I gotta pay the bills," she said. "It's not like I'm selling alcohol that 
kills people."

The products have been lucrative. Moren sold out her first shipment of 
blankets in less than a week. She raised the price from $50 to $60, but 
still had trouble keeping them in stock.

Entry after entry in her store's record book reads "Cannabis -- $60," with 
only a handful of other designs penned in between. Moren's sold so many 
that she no longer has one to display outside her store.

"I made $7,000 in less than a week on one blanket. That's all I'm selling," 
she said. "Once I got this in, they aren't buying my NASCAR (blankets)."
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D