Americana: Losing Your Head Shop

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Neighborhood paraphernalia dealers blossomed as fast as the drug culture, flowering on corners across the nation with a wide assortment of cigarette rolling papers, small pipes, cocaine spoons, psychedelic lights and other legal appurtenances for high living. But for many officials,the head shops serve as a too-blatant reminder of the losing battle against drugs.

A crusade against the shops, in Westfield, Mass., began when a horrified friend showed some pipes and smoking paraphernalia he had found in his twelve-year-old son's bureau to City Councilor Charles Medeiros. "I had thought those things were illegal," Medeiros said. He proposed an ordinance, which passed unanimously, requiring such stores to get licenses. Mayor Gary Lynch, who reluctantly signed the law, commented, "It strikes me as cutting off the branches instead of the roots."

The head shops are banding together in mutual protection, as would members of any other $3 billion-a-year business. Says Chris Colbert, director of the

Paraphernalia Trade Association, with headquarters in Philadelphia: "We're not a bunch of stoned-out hippies carving pipes in the basement. We're normal businessmen with shirts and ties." The association hired a lawyer to fight Westfield's action and won a preliminary injunction against enforcing the new ordinance. Whatever the outcome, the battle is educational. Says Medeiros: "I'll tell you, I've learned a lot myself. I never knew they sold orange-flavored cigarette papers."