Calgary considers banning sale of drug paraphernalia
CanWest News Service; Calgary Herald
Published: Friday, September 07, 2007
CALGARY -- The city of Calgary is considering banning the sale of crack pipes, roach clips, water bongs and other drug paraphernalia.
Ald. Craig Burrows will urge his colleagues at Monday's council meeting to recommend city bureaucrats investigate ways to prohibit the sale of the materials."These people are (selling) to crack addicts, which is contributing to problems downtown," Burrows said.
The Criminal Code of Canada prohibits the sale of "instruments or literature for illicit drug use," but stores often put 'for tobacco use' labels on pipes and bongs in an effort to get around the law, and few city police forces enforce the federal law.
But Calgary may be fighting an uphill battle in trying to ban the sale of drug gear, says a legal expert -- especially since cities across Canada run programs that hand out clean, free needles to intravenous drug users.
"It's probably not a terribly well thought-out law (and) I would say that any city that tried a ban on its own would probably face a legal challenge based on the fact that it was violating federal jurisdiction - criminal law. I'd say a challenge like that would put up a very good fight,"said Ed Morgan, a law professor at the University of Toronto.
"(A needle exchange program) probably falls afoul of the law," he added.
In every province, drug users can get clean needles from more than 500 locations, including hospitals and pharmacies, according to an April 2007 report by the Canadian HIV/AIDSLegal Network.
Ottawa even ran a two-year program that provided clean crack cocaine pipes, although the city stopped funding it in July.
But Toronto isn't considering banning so-called head shops, said city spokesman Brad Ross.
"Iimagine there'd be some dispute over whether the city could do that -- and Idon't know how that would work, since we do have a needle exchange program," Ross said.
In March, however, Calgary police raided four stores and seized about 3,000 pipes, bongs and other items such as steel wool. The wool is often used as an improvised filter at the end of a crack pipe. They also seized marijuana and related products from one store.
As a result, 10 people were charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking, and selling an instrument for illicit drug use. The maximum penalty if convicted of the second charge is $100,000 and/or six months in jail for a first offence.
Some cities in British Columbia have put limits on the sale of drug paraphernalia. Langley prohibited the sale of paraphernalia to anyone under the age of 19 and made stores record and report all purchases to the RCMP.
Vancouver also has a bylaw that requires pipes, bongs and other items to be invisible from the street, not displayed in store windows and not sold to anyone under the age of 19.
But Chris Emery, the publisher of Vancouver's Cannabis Culture magazine, said if head shops are shut down, the sale of drug paraphernalia would simply go online, where police would have a harder time making sure vendors weren't also selling drugs to minors, for example.
"Transparency is better for any community, and that's what happens when you have a store selling it; the police can monitor it,"Emerson said.
"And besides, stores pay taxes."
Calgary Herald
With files from the Vancouver Province
© CanWest News Service 2007