A Boom in the Bong Business

In a spacious garage two doors away from a private Pasadena elementary school, two men use blow torches to mold thin Pyrex cylinders into fancy glass pipes favored by marijuana smokers.

At a private after-hours club in Hollywood, a budding entrepreneur sashays about the dance floor, giving patrons free water pipes, or bongs, to create a buzz about his paraphernalia business.

In 450,000 homes in West Los Angeles, cable TV viewers can watch commercials for a local head shop that sells a full line of equipment for marijuana smokers. One ad boldly parodies Rodney King’s plea: “Can’t we all get a bong?”

Buoyed by a surge in marijuana use, the drug paraphernalia business appears to be booming. Working from rented homes or warehouses, eager young capitalists are turning out thousands of pipes and bongs--devices said to boost the effect of marijuana--despite laws against selling and transporting such equipment.

The items are sold at retail stores known as head shops that try to attract customers with surprisingly bold window displays. At Vajar on Melrose Avenue, 20 bongs are showcased--including one fashioned from a baby bottle.

The industry is operating in full view of law enforcement officials who say they are too busy chasing cocaine and heroin dealers to bother with paraphernalia peddlers. Indeed, one of Southern California’s largest bong makers freely conducts business in a Northridge neighborhood so notorious for drug dealing that it is under constant police surveillance.

The industry seems to be benefiting from a certain ambivalence about marijuana, even as concerns about illegal drug use intensify. Californians last month approved Proposition 215, allowing marijuana for medical use, although drug abuse--especially among teens--was a major issue in the presidential campaign.

Openly selling paraphernalia would have been unthinkable only five years ago. Declaring war on drugs, state and federal authorities seized shipments, raided head shops and drove the paraphernalia industry underground.

As part of its 1991 Operation Pipe crackdown, U.S. customs agents in Los Angeles seized three truckloads of paraphernalia worth $3.5 million. By contrast, the agency’s largest haul in Los Angeles over the last five years was a shipment of key chains with brass pipes attached to them valued at $7,000.

Echoing comments by local police and prosecutors, a Customs Service representative said: “Drug paraphernalia is not our highest priority.”

No longer prime law enforcement targets, paraphernalia firms are beginning to behave like conventional businesses--airing TV ads and conducting product giveaways. One bong maker uses a CD-ROM Yellow Pages directory to locate potential retail customers. Another paraphernalia maker uses the World Wide Web to promote its selection of blown-glass bongs and other pipes. Yet another bong company is lending its name to professional sports sponsorships.

Head shops are starting to shed their underground image, ditching dim lighting and Grateful Dead posters in favor of coffee bars and live music. Galaxy, a month-old store on Melrose, includes an art gallery and a juice bar--and what owner Russ Ceres claims is the city’s largest selection of water pipes. On a recent weekend, a professional glass blower from Oakland made hand pipes to entertain customers.

“We’re trying to bring intelligence and style to the pipe shops,” said Ceres, 27. “We want to get that Beavis and Butthead image out of the limelight.”

Operating from a studio in Brentwood, John Brown typifies the new breed of paraphernalia entrepreneur. By his calculation, he and an employee turn out more than 100 hand-crafted bongs a week, which Brown sells to the two dozen “head shops that count” around Los Angeles.

Hoping to drum up business outside the city, Brown makes cold calls to potential customers in the San Francisco Bay Area, and sends them color brochures. On weekends, he works the crowds at private after-hours clubs, handing out free 6-inch acrylic water pipes that retail for $15 to $20 to publicize his business.

Clad in a leather jacket over a faded “Star Wars” shirt, his spiky white hair on end, Brown turned up at a Hollywood club named High Society one recent Saturday. Slung over his shoulder was a Kenneth Cole satchel containing 15 bongs. As he made his way across the dance floor, Brown stopped and embraced a club patron, offering the startled man a free water pipe.

“I love to get high,” said the man, an aspiring rapper who gave his name as DAX, for Digital Audio Extra-large. Grinning broadly, DAX shouted over the loud dance music: “This is beautiful.”

Minutes later, Brown reached into his bag and handed a bong to Damien DeSantos, a 25-year-old insurance broker from the San Fernando Valley. Thrilled with his freebie though he already owns three bongs, DeSantos gave Brown an enthusiastic high-five.

“This is outstanding,” DeSantos declared.

Given that 8 million Americans are believed to regularly smoke marijuana, according to government estimates, the market for paraphernalia is large. By spending $20 each on paraphernalia a year, marijuana smokers could make up a $160-million market.

Or higher. The marijuana advocacy group NORML believes that marijuana users are more numerous and spend more on equipment. It puts annual paraphernalia sales at $1 billion.

Judging from police seizures of marijuana, the market for paraphernalia is rapidly growing. Through the first six months of 1996, the Los Angeles Police Department seized nearly 30,000 pounds of marijuana, 20% more than it collected in all of 1995.

“It’s a supply and demand situation,” Lt. Bernie Larralde of the LAPD’s narcotics unit said of the paraphernalia business. “And there’s a big demand.”

Dozens of colored pins dot a map of the United States posted on the wall of Waterworx, a large bong company based in Northridge. The pins, concentrated in Florida, the Northeast and California, represent Waterworx accounts.

Outside the company’s Parthenia Street warehouse, orange banners warn that the neighborhood is an “LAPD Video Zone. Buy Drugs, Go to Jail.” Inside, a clerk equipped with a PC, fax machine and two fat Rolodexes answered the phone and apologized for a late shipment: “With the holidays coming, we’re really busy.” A ceramic bong was on his desk.

Hanging up the phone, the clerk, giving his name as Rick, said he couldn’t discuss Waterworx in detail. Its owner, listed in city business records as Brian K. Johnson, did not return calls.

The owner of Darkside Recycling in Pasadena is enthusiastic about his plans. A manufacturer that claims 300 wholesale customers, Darkside is about to open a retail store, its first, in Pasadena’s staid Lake Avenue shopping district.

Darkside owner Markuss--he changed his name from Mark Hill because “it felt right”--said the shop will offer glass lamps, besides handcrafted pipes and bongs. Among them will be his latest design: an ornate double-chambered $170 bong called the Tupac, named for slain rapper Tupac Shakur, who glorified marijuana use in songs.

“I’m going to have a chain of these stores,” said Markuss, a 24-year-old high school dropout who started out making bongs from wine bottles under the name Conceal Your Habit. “I’ll be nationwide.”

Perhaps--business climates are cooler elsewhere. In New York, police have seized 100 garbage bags of merchandise from paraphernalia shops in recent months as part of an ongoing crackdown. Drug paraphernalia is hard to come by in other Eastern cities, such as Washington and Boston, said Alan St. Pierre, deputy director of NORML, which advocates the legalization of marijuana.

“By any state law it is illegal, but local mores determine what is sold and at what level,” he said.

Police in Los Angeles say they’ve observed a proliferation of head shops throughout the city--Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley, the Westside. But police, preoccupied with hard-drug cases, say they tend to ignore paraphernalia merchants in part because apprehension is tricky. Many paraphernalia dealers post signs saying their bongs and other pipes are for use with tobacco--an attempt to circumvent anti-paraphernalia laws.

“They can say, ‘Not for use with narcotics’ or ‘For use with tobacco’ and they skirt the issue. They beat the law,” said the LAPD’s Larralde.

In Vajar on Melrose, a sign behind the counter states that water pipes are for tobacco and not sold to people under 18. Another posting warns that patrons using such words as “crack pipe,” “shaker vial” and “bong” will be refused service. Never mind that such articles are not found in chain stores devoted to cigarettes.

“What people want to smoke--that is up to them,” said head shop owner Jacob Vajar. “Me--I smoke cigars.”

“It’s a word game we play,” said Galaxy owner Ceres, who also sells a smattering of foreign cigarettes and cigars amid an inventory of 1,000 bongs. “You talk about pipes. I say tobacco.”

Semantics don’t always hold up in court. In 1986, then Deputy City Atty. Jessica Perrin Silvers obtained the conviction of a Van Nuys head shop owner who claimed his paraphernalia was used with tobacco and snuff. Police had seized 6,000 items from his store.

“He put on his experts and I put on mine,” said Silvers, now a Municipal Court judge. “How many people use snuff in Los Angeles?”

In a 1994 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal court conviction of an Iowa head shop owner who argued that her paraphernalia had legitimate uses. The high court held that the owner of Posters ‘N Things knew bongs, pipes and other items are commonly used with illegal drugs.

Such rulings seem not to bother 2000 B.C., a head shop on Melrose that flaunts its association with marijuana. A banner outside the shop depicts marijuana leaves. Inside, an assortment of water pipes is displayed on clay-colored cliffs in an alcove called “Bong Canyon.”

Customers trickled in throughout one afternoon. A young woman came in and bought a $10 pocket-size pipe called a Sneak-a-Toke. “Perfect for Dodgers games,” said store manager David Ratcliffe.

Another customer plunked down $70 for a purple blown-glass bong--a Christmas gift for her boyfriend.

Acting on complaints, police raided 2000 B.C. in 1994, charging owner Craig X. Rubens with violating anti-paraphernalia laws. But the city attorney declined to press charges, saying more investigation was needed.

The incident made Rubens, a former UCLA political science major, a hero within the paraphernalia industry. High Times magazine, a publication that provides tips on growing marijuana, lauded him as “Freedom Fighter of the Month.”

Emboldened, Rubens began advertising on cable TV, with great success. His commercials on Continental Cable in West Los Angeles attract more than 60% of his customers, Rubens says. The store grosses $600,000 a year.

In the original spot for 2000 B.C., a series of frustrated customers use gestures and euphemisms to ask for a water pipe. The commercial ends with Rubens asking: “Can’t we all get a bong?”

Recent commercials have contrasted images of ravaged timberlands and oil-soaked beaches with idyllic fields of hemp--the fibrous plant that produces marijuana seeds and leaves. Besides paraphernalia, 2000 B.C. sells clothing, paper and other items made of hemp.

Through a spokeswoman, Continental Cable said it accepted the commercials because it considers 2000 B.C. “an environmental products store.” The recent spots aired on MTV, a channel popular with teenagers. Century Cable in Los Angeles has refused to air the ads.

2000 B.C. is not the only company to make a big marketing splash. A San Diego businessman is using the name of a well-known bong maker to sponsor professional snowboard and skateboard teams.

One Graffix International-sponsored skateboarder, Darrin “Cookiehead” Jenkins, competed in the Extreme Games, which aired in June on ESPN. Bongs bearing the Graffix International logo--a skull with Gothic lettering--are staples in most head shops.

Todd Peterson, the businessman behind the Graffix sports sponsorships, said he licensed the name from the bong maker, also called Graffix International, because it is “recognized” and “cool.” Besides sponsoring teams, Peterson said his company is marketing clothing and stickers with the Graffix logo. He insists he has no connection to the Phoenix-based paraphernalia company beyond the licensing agreement.

But Matt Goodwill, an extreme snowboarder from Seattle, said a company named Graffix courted him with a boxful of freebies: shirts and caps with the Graffix logo, and a bong.

“It was a product deal,” Goodwill said. “If I went with them, I guess I’d get a lot of bongs.”

Representatives of Graffix International in Phoenix did not return phone calls.

The development evidently hasn’t raised many eyebrows in extreme sports, popular with teenage boys.

“This is America. Make bongs, make butter knives. I say good luck,” said Jake Phelps, editor of the San Francisco-based skateboarding magazine Thrasher.

But some drug treatment experts say the growing visibility of paraphernalia firms legitimizes drug use and sends the wrong signal to teens.

“What I see with the spread of head shops is we’ve got an official policy, and that policy is worthless,” said Dr. Alex Stalcup, director of the New Leaf Treatment Center in San Francisco.

That sentiment worries some people in the paraphernalia business, who believe bold marketing gimmicks could backfire. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on Proposition 215, indicating increased concern about marijuana use.

“I hate to say it, but the people at 2000 B.C., and Graffix, they’re pushing it,” said the manager of a Van Nuys head shop called Giftworx, who gave his name only as Peter. He discreetly displays only a handful of water pipes, storing the rest in a cupboard. Of his more daring competitors, he lamented: “They will ruin it for everybody.”