'Show her you care', indeed.

Crack pipes come easy at convenience stores

'They look like novelty items, but they're not. For sale at convenience stores in Boston, four-inch glass tubes featuring fake mini-roses inside of them are actually crack pipes.

BostonNOW's reporter entered a Blue Hill Avenue store yesterday afternoon, asked the clerk for a "straight shooter," and received the glass tube, flower and a steel wool pad (to be used as a filter when smoking crack).

In response to situations like these, City Councilor Chuck Turner and other councilors, including Felix Arroyo and Michael Flaherty, have filed an ordinance to prohibit the sale of these pipes, also known as "rosebuds" or "stems."

"As a community, we need to work together on issues of drugs and violence," said Turner. "The business community needs to work with us as well. We have to find many creative ways to lessen the use of drugs."

"For young people to see [crack pipes] so openly in stores, they think it's acceptable," said Arroyo, "and it is not."

The ordinance, which does not have a hearing date as of yet, mandates that a $300 fine shall be handed out to those stores that sell the crack pipes or those people found in possession of the devices. Each pipe, the ordinance reads, shall constitute an individual offense.