Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Council to Target Sale of Certain Items?

DCist is reporting that the DC Council is considering legislation that would ban or restrict the sale of certain items (including cigarette rolling papers) that could be used as drug paraphrenalia. You'll recall the Post's recent story on a fight over the novelty mini rose in a tube (easily employed as a crack pipe) in Anacostia.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As with the rose tubes, it seems to me that the Council has better uses for their time than prohibiting paraphalia in a manner that's sure to make no difference to any serious user.

I used to live in an extremely gentrified area of Portland, OR, and they decided to ban 40s to keep the 'less desirable' element out.

Did the homeless leave? (questions of whether displacement through gentrification is an acceptable choice aside) Of course not, they merely walked ten blocks, bought 40s there, then came back to where the panhandling was good.

It seems to me that this will just necessitate unecessary and futile enforcement costs without even begining to address any of the real problems.