The movement to lead Pacific Beach toward creating a family-friendly atmosphere is not joking about smoking.
Community members in Pacific Beach want tobacco retail shops out of the community because they say the stores scare families away from an area that wants to attract more families.
Those against the smoke shops say the stores sell illegal drug paraphernalia in the form of glass pipes and glass water pipes, which they say, promotes illegal drug use.
Pacific Beach community groups sent letters in February to Councilman Kevin Faulconer, City Attorney Mike Aguirre and other city officials urging them to “make every effort to ensure that businesses selling illegal drug paraphernalia are pursued aggressively and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” according to the letter from Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee dated February 27. The Pacific Beach Town Council also sent letters to city officials.
Other communities with a lot of college students are also trying to stop availability of drug use.
College Area Community Council sent a letter in February to Council Member Jim Maddafer asking the city to revoke the business licenses of stores selling the paraphernalia.
Pacific Beach Community Planning Committee member, Marcie Beckett, said the smoke shops around here need to go if the community wants to improve Pacific Beach.
“[The stores] portray our community in a negative light and its not going to help us attract families to our community.” Beckett said.
The letter from the community planning committee states there are eight smoke shops in Pacific Beach within approximately one-square mile of seven elementary, middle and high schools. Beckett said a smoke shop called the High Road at 1465 Garnet Ave. sits across the street from the Mr. Frosty, 1466 Garnet Ave., where school age children buy ice cream. She said fancy displays in the windows of smoke shops could lead children to believe that using the pipes is okay.
Beckett said having more smoke shops than schools prevents some families from moving to Pacific Beach.
Laura Daly, president of the Pacific Beach Elementary Parent Teacher Organization agrees with Beckett.
“As a mother of three children in Pacific Beach, we don’t need [smoke shops], we don’t want [smoke shops].” Daly said.
To achieve their stated community plan goals of revitalizing the commercial district, the planning committee has turn to the law and community support to stop smoke shops from selling glass pipes and glass water pipes or bongs.
Discover Pacific Beach, the area business improvement district, has also sent a letter to all the smoke shops in the community recommending they follow the law, said Benjamin Nicholls, executive director of Discover PB. The shops, like every business in the district, pay an average of about $90 a year into Discover Pacific Beach coffers, Nicholls said.
Though California law prohibits the sale of drug paraphernalia the city has found it difficult to stop them from selling glassware.
In November, Aguirre ordered 52 smoke shops around the city to stop selling drug paraphernalia such as “oil burners” used to ingest methamphetamine and “baggies” used to package drugs. All but one store in the city complied, according to the city attorney’s office.
A manager at The Black in Ocean Beach said police came around in November to check if they sold illegal paraphernalia.
The Black sells many types of tobacco and the store manager maintains they don’t sell items for illegal purposes.
The city attorney’s office has not aggressively targeted stores selling glass pipes because pipes are supposed to be use to smoke tobacco, making them legal under state law, Makini Hammond, deputy city attorney with the Drug Abatement Response Team said.
She added that the city currently lacks the resources to go after the smoke shops under federal law, which would “get peoples’ attention,” she said
“We have primarily concentrated on meth and crack pipes. Those are the most serious. But I don’t know that there is the political will to go after the marijuana,” she said.
Regardless of the state of the city’s political will, Tim Adams, owner of the Da Glassworks, 1438 Garnet Ave., said the city doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on and reaffirms his right to sell the water pipes.
He said the possibility that some people use the pipes as bongs to smoke marijuana has no bearing on his right to sell them.
“Its like going to the store and buying a knife,” Adams said, “It’s not a murder weapon, until it’s used as a murder weapon,”
The community has a bigger problem with the local bar scene and binge drinking if community members seriously want to improve Pacific Beach, he said.