Pubdate: Mon, 05 Jan 2009
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2009 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Norman Kent, CounterPunch

WHY HEAD SHOP RAIDS ARE UNFAIR AND UNJUST

How A Reckless Mayor, Heartless Federal Agents And A Disorganized 
Drug-Consuming Public Led To A Pointless Raid On Head Shops

Duval Street is the epicenter of Key West, Fla., home to Sloppy 
Joe's, Ernest Hemingway's and a host of bars and hotels that have for 
a century captured the spark and soul of this land of the lost.

The Environmental Circus is gone, Valladares' News Stand is history, 
and though La Te Da still stands, Larry Formica and his pink Cadillac 
have long since passed. Where a beat up wooden dock and a collage of 
cultures once gathered on historic Mallory Square, cruise ships now 
pour out thousands of tourists in flowered shirts onto the city's main streets.

Fantasy Fest still wreaks havoc to the city every fall, but the 
pirate image of this out-of-the-way city has been lost for a long 
time now, to T-shirt shops and condos; to name hotels and tourist 
traps. The epicenter of the city, Duval Street, has seen some of its 
landmarks become chain pharmacies, and cheap coffee shops like 
Shorty's and Dennis Pharmacy have become convenience stores.

Walking down Duval Street in 2008, you are more likely to find a 
foreign exchange student from Slovakia peddling a bike for extra cash 
than you are to stumble upon a runaway teen from New York hustling a 
street corner for change. The times they are no longer a-changing. 
The times they have changed.

The temperature on Oct. 17, 2008 in Key West was its typical tropical 
75 degrees. Ladies were sunning themselves bare-breasted at the Pier 
House's private beach. Fishermen were working the pier, vacationers 
on mopeds crisscrossed the narrow streets and more than one drunk 
stumbled down an alleyway. After all, it is still Key West.

But the heat on Duval Street was about to get hotter.

The shops on Duval Street opened their doors as usual, with no 
threats of a hurricane brewing. Merchants, if anything, were readying 
themselves for the annual, sin-filled festival of self-ordained 
decadence, Key West Fantasy Fest. On that date, many of them, head 
shops, were selling rolling papers, glass pipes, bongs and other 
products designed to enhance the right of happiness, a constitutional 
right not too often protected by our courts.

The stores had signs all over them saying the products are for 'legal 
and tobacco use only.' But this distressed the new mayor, concerned 
that his little town was sending the wrong message: "You know that 
you don't really smoke tobacco out of those things." He sounded like 
Sarah Palin telling us how you could see Russia "from my house here in Alaska."

The misguided mayor of this island city disapproved of the displays 
and set to do something about it. So he called the feds. You see, 
under broad Florida laws, those pipes are legal. Not so under federal 
law. Understandably, this confuses the average citizen. Heck, it 
confuses lawyers, too.

Title 21, Chapter 13 of federal law states: "Drug paraphernalia means 
any equipment, product or material of any kind which is primarily 
intended or designed for use in manufacturing, compounding, 
converting, concealing, producing, processing, preparing, injecting, 
ingesting, inhaling or otherwise introducing into the human body a 
controlled substance ..."

Supported by the local district attorney, the mayor found his answer. 
On this quiet morning in October, federal authorities from 16 
agencies, aided by local and state operatives, converged on Duval 
Street and the neighboring streets where head shops dispensed their 
products lawfully, or so they thought.

Store by store, law enforcement entered with badges and guns, 
uniforms and crates -- that's right, crates -- to confiscate and cart 
away the inventory of these stores to the waiting rental truck 
conspicuously parked in the center of the street.

Systematically, the feds sucked up any items they deemed as 
contraband that they say could be used to violate Title 21. The items 
taken were rolling papers, lighters, ashtrays, bongs, catalogues, 
pipes and anything they say could potentially be used to violate the 
law. There was no order or determination of probable cause by a 
jurist, no ruling by a court that the items were illegal, just law 
enforcement officers with cartons and guns.

Furthering their operation, these officers then seized all the 
financial records of the stores, including their receipts and credit 
card purchases. That means if you have visited Key West lately and 
you purchased one of those glass pipes, the feds now know where you 
live, too. Your credit card number is now sitting in a federal 
database as a drug paraphernalia consumer. No, there was no judicial 
hearing on that either.

As a matter of fact, no one was charged with a crime, but the feds 
carted off 11,920 items defined as drug paraphernalia under the 
federal law, with an estimated value of three-quarters of one million 
dollars. Not a bad haul for one sleepy, sunny morning in Key West.

Since the raids, at least two stores have summarily closed their 
doors, their inventory entirely depleted. Abby Frew, the owner of a 
shop called Energy, said: "The financial loss was too great. Stay 
open? I don't think so. They took all my stuff."

"I wanted to clean up the city's image," said Mayor Morgan McPherson. 
"I did not like what I saw in the windows of all those stores." He 
added that if the businesspeople don't like it that they "call their 
congressman."

He cleaned it up all right. Aided by a complicit federal government 
following their own set of laws, he kicked the businesses out without 
due process of law. He disgraced its community, screwed its 
businessman and advanced a disgusting partisan personal political 
agenda. In the old Key West, he would have been recalled and reviled. 
In the new Key West, he becomes a hero.

An enlightened mayor might have called the chamber of commerce or 
invited a community discussion to discuss alternatives. The mayor 
might have used code enforcement and local ordinances to mandate 
zoning changes. Instead, he called and asked the feds to do what her 
own city cops were not allowed to do.

Moti Elfasi, an Israeli by birth, is one of those businessmen whose 
inventory was seized. Having lived in Key West for a decade, he loves 
the atmosphere and the community of the island. But his head is 
spinning over what happened to him.

Here is what he told local reporters: "I don't understand America. 
They gave me a license in Key West. I paid my taxes. I obeyed the 
law. Florida said it was OK to sell the things. But now people from 
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and federal agents from the 
Drug Enforcement Administration come in and take everything away from 
me without even a notice to remove it first."

It's more than that, Moti.

You detrimentally relied upon the representations of Key West city 
representatives that you could lawfully do what you were doing. Day 
by day, hour by hour, Key West city police patrolled your business, 
and no one told you that you could not do what you were doing. You 
have been operating openly and legally for years. You paid your 
taxes. You had an occupational license. You employed your neighbors. 
Now you got screwed.

Key West is not the first city to deal with this conflict between 
state and federal laws, nor will it be the last. California is of 
course the epicenter of this cosmos of confusion, with the feds 
neither recognizing medical dispensaries nor Proposition 215, a 
medial marijuana law. Just last week, our federal government pushed 
the envelope even further, raiding head shops in San Diego.

Across this country, over the past few years, other shops across this 
country have been systematically and surreptitiously raided, and 
their products seized. Meanwhile, pipes and paraphernalia are being 
marketed nationally, expanding rapidly in convenience stores from 
coast to coast. Find one repressive, right-wing mayor in the right 
town with the wrong agenda and you could conceivably become the 
target. Ask Tommy Chong. It's still happening on a wider scale.

What happens to the products that are seized?

Agents quietly warn the businessmen to suck up the forfeiture and not 
challenge it in court. The advisory goes something like this: "Most 
likely we will just destroy this stuff as contraband, but if you 
attempt to challenge it, well there is no saying we won't come back 
and arrest you." Facing a not-so-veiled threat of criminal 
prosecution, the stores live with the bankruptcies, seizures and loss 
of their products. The feds say they will destroy the contraband. 
More likely, some of them will use it at their bachelor parties.

These raids may deprive stores of their inventory, but our government 
abandons fundamental principles. Our citizens lose their rights. 
Lawyers are denied the opportunity to meaningfully contest the 
seizures. One more chink is carved into the heart of liberty.

If the past stays true to form, these unconscionable seizures will 
not make the national news. Politicians are too complacent, the 
drug-law reform movement is too weak, and the massive pot smoking 
public is too disorganized, probably more concerned about getting 
high on those products designed for legal purposes only.

As for those merchants, outside of a small circle of their friends, 
no one cares.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart