January 25, 2007
John Street, City Council End City's Drug Problems
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These legal items range from bongs to blunts, apples to two-liter soda bottles and anything else somebody could smoke out of in a pinch. Cigarette rolling papers are now illegal, too!
Yes, the city has passed the anti-blunt bill, championed by police officer Jerry Rocks. The law (full text available here, .pdf) bans selling any sort of product that could possibly be used to smoke within 500 feet of a school, church, community center, regardless of the intent. Basically, it appears to give police officers the authority to decide on a case-by-case basis what's an exception and what's not and puts the onus on retailers and not the people actually causing problems. (The bill was proposed to stop kids from loitering outside stores. Oddly enough, the bill sets forth fines for the year 2005, even though it was introduced last year.)
Rocks began his crusade against blunts when he decided he didn't like that convenience (or, as the CBS 3 article calls them "convenient") stores were selling flavored blunts.
"I believe they're drug paraphernalia. Sunoco says old men smoke the blunts and women. But I don't know any women who smoke watermelon blunts and any old men that smoke blueberry and raspberry blunts," said Rocks during a June 2006 interview.
Oh! Jerry Rocks doesn't know anyone who does it, so we should criminalize it! Hell, while we're at it, I don't know anyone who likes the 17 people in City Council so concerned with telling us what we can and can't put in our body or what how we may enjoy legal products. Can we get rid of them?
Mayor Street Signs Anti-Drug Paraphernalia Bill [CBS 3]
Posted by D-Mac on January 25, 2007 01:43 PM
Posted to Blunt Ban
, City Council
, Drugs
, Marijuana
, War on Drugs
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Comments
Yes, this bill is idiotic and offensive in many many ways. The prohibition of marijuana, 70 years old this August 3 and steadily dying, does nothing to curb the demand for it. This misguided bill is yet another slap in Philadelphia's face. In reality it will have absolutely no effect on who uses marijuana or how they use it. As the OP said, when you can simply carve out an apple and use that as your smoking utensil, it should be obvious that this will do nothing in the long run.
When will the citizens wake up and realize just how useless our current Council is? One must question why the entire Council co-sponsored this paraphernalia ban, adversely affecting and affronting more consumers than typically vote in Council elections, which also take place this year. Even worse is that when PhillyNORML, Philadelphia's only marijuana reform organization, called and mailed letters to the Council, they completely ignored our concerns. Philadelphia has an opportunity this year to show the incumbent Council that offenses like this are unacceptable. Vote them out!
Posted by: Derek at February 5, 2007 01:14 PM
It's time to vote those thieves out of office. Or better, send them to jail. Who will run against them?
Posted by: James Babb at February 5, 2007 04:03 PM
"Sunoco says old men smoke the blunts and women."
Wait--old men smoke women? What legislation is there to stop THAT?
Posted by: Lynn at January 26, 2007 12:38 AM