Dorchester activist fights sale of makeshift crack pipes

David Cogger

Mesfen Manna is fed up.

The Dorchester resident and neighborhood activist is tired of seeing lives destroyed by crack cocaine. And he is frustrated by Blue Hill Avenue storeowners who continue to exploit the opportunity to make money by selling drug paraphernalia to addicts and kids, further fueling an epidemic that has been a scourge on poor, mostly black sections of Boston since the 1990s.

But Manna isn’t taking the problem lying down. He is talking to shopkeepers selling the paraphernalia and threatening to organize boycotts of stores that refuse to do the right thing.

The four-inch glass tubes containing a small paper rose with a green stem along with a small piece of Chore Boy, a steel wool product often used as a screen for crack pipes, sell for only 99 cents. Known as “straight shooters,” “stems,” “hooters” or “roses,” the pipes, sold under the brand name Wild Irish Rose, have been popping up at bodegas and convenience stores throughout Boston for months.

Manna says the pipes clearly have no real utility beyond their use as crack pipes.

His one-man campaign to alert storeowners to the potential harm of the products has not gone unnoticed. He has received support from Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, who has filed a bill to establish an ordinance banning the sale of the pipes.

Turner, along with colleagues Felix Arroyo and Michael Flaherty, filed the bill when Manna told him that the seemingly innocuous four-inch tubes were being sold as crack pipes at many Boston convenience stores.

“There is no question that the products are crack pipes,” Turner said. “If you Google ‘crack pipes,’ you’ll see that the description clearly fits the product being sold at the convenience stores — the tinfoil over the end is a strong indicator of what they are.”

As Manna sees it, the current problem started in the 1980s and 1990s when crack first hit the streets of Boston. Today the trend is different, with many of the users having been addicts since the 1980s.
“It has become more mainstream, in a funny kind of way,” Manna said.

Manna explained that pipes like the ones he’s campaigning against have made it easier for users to smoke crack.

“Crack used to be more complicated,” he said. “Users needed an empty plastic bottle and a needle and they had to go inside and sit down, or ‘get stuck,’ and stay inside.”

The high forced some users into “zombie-like” states, making them want to stay inside — which was a good thing, Manna said, because a user might stop to think twice about going out to score more crack. With the pipes, such second thoughts are more rare.

“The pipes have made it possible for users to light up right on the street, making it easier for dealers and their runners to target potential customers looking for another fix,” said an exasperated Manna.

In most stores, the pipes are displayed close to the cash registers. In one store in Codman Square, Manna recalls seeing an older man come in with a young girl “who couldn’t have been more than 15” and was clearly high. The older man asked the clerk for three roses, which the clerk promptly placed on the counter along with a clump of Chore Boy.

“How can a storeowner sell this to a minor?” Manna asks in disbelief.

Occasionally, Manna’s efforts have paid off. He recently visited a store and explained to the owner the potential harm posed by the stems. When the owner told him that he knew what the pipes were for, Manna played to his conscience, and the owner agreed not to sell the pipes anymore.

Manna’s original game plan was to pursue a diplomatic solution, going to individual storeowners to plead his case. But with the added clout of Turner’s ordinance, which would impose a $300 fine for sale or possession of the pipes, Manna thinks stores will start to pay attention for fear of potential negative exposure from the fines.

While getting rid of the pipes is an immediate solution, Manna sees the crack problem in a broader context as twofold.

He would like to know where the pipes are coming from. Like the recent proliferation of cheap cigars used as blunts for smoking marijuana in the same stores, Manna thinks pipe suppliers again are taking advantage of a vulnerable population.

“Phillies, Garcia Y Vegas, White Owls — it used to be EZ Wider — now cigar wrappers used as blunts are the preferred method for smoking marijuana,” Manna said. “The pipes are going for only 99 cents, I don’t see how the suppliers could be making a profit.” Manna thinks something far more insidious is driving the suppliers.

Finally, Manna says, the problem is cultural.

“Until the issue of blacks’ sense of inferiority has been addressed, these problems will not go away,” he said. “It is not enough to have a bunch of activities in February during Black History Month. We are the hardest hit by this epidemic and until storeowners no longer have a customer base for these products, they will continue to supply them and feel that they would be remiss in serving their customer base if they did not.”