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Bongs Over Baghdad: Operation Pipe Dreams Attacks The True Enemy

By Paul Labich

Picture this, you’re the proud owner and CEO of a small business that sells perfectly legal glass pipes over the Internet. You’re sitting down at home on Sunday night after a hard week of work to kick back with some herbal refreshment and watch the Simpsons when, BAM! Federal agents armed to the teeth are slamming you against the wall and tearing your world apart like you were Saddam Hussein’s illegitimate son.

On February 24, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft addressed the nation to announce the indictment of 50 Americans charged with “conspiracy to sell and offering to sell various types of drug paraphernalia.”

Feds also seized control of 11 websites that include:
pipesforyou.com, colorchangingglass.com, puffpipes.com, aheadcase.com, 420now.com and pipesforyou.com.

The raids, ingeniously dubbed Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter utilized the joint efforts of the DEA, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, Secret Service, U.S. Marshalls, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Immigration Naturalization Service as well as local police forces from Idaho, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas and California.. An estimated 1,200 federal agents, all fueled by U.S. tax dollars, were involved in the raids, all while the country was on High Alert for terrorist attacks.

As of the day this article was written, Operation Pipe Dreams has done nothing to lower the level of hysteria the government has forced upon the American people. It has also put nearly 60 young entrepreneurs behind bars, hundreds more out of work and closed two dozen small businesses.

Operation Pipe Dreams was the most highly publicized stunt by the DEA in their recent attack against marijuana and the culture that surrounds it. An obvious result was the collapse of all forms of drug trafficking and use of illicit drugs by the American public.

For years, nonsense spitting, deviant pot-smoking hippies have been arguing against the War on Drugs. It has been referred to as a war against our own people that cannot be won by clogging the prison system with low term drug offenders.

Some sensible, war loving Americans have also expressed concern about fighting a perpetually escalating international ground warfare campaign and a war against crackheads and stoners. At the same time, raids like Operation Pipe Dreams are seen as a gross misappropriation of government funds and man power that would be better spent preventing terrorist attacks like 9/11. Even some complete wackos have called marijuana a harmless drug that is more of a gateway to McDonald’s than Crack or Heroin.

During the group ass-kissing, that was the press conference for Operation Pipe Dreams, acting DEA Administrator John B. Brown was quoted as saying, “People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers. They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide.”

This recent push to demonize and attack every element of drug culture, besides distribution, (I mean, what would that solve?) began early in 2002 when government funded ads were shown during prime time television. They attempted to link casual drug use with the funding of international terrorism. When that subtle campaign did not have the desired effect, ads
produced through government funded freevibe.org attacked marijuana and it’s users directly by linking it to teen pregnancy, fatal car crashes, cancer and homicide by shooting and high speed fast food drive thru getaways.

Now Operation Pipe Dreams emerges as the culmination of the warped agenda of a hapless government with no idea of how to curb drug use except putting more people in jail. Each person indicted in February faces a maximum jail sentence of 3 years, a $250,000 dollar fine and the appropriation of all assets under the statutes of the RICO act. Local head shops in Ithaca such as New Age Hemp have been forced to greatly reduce their stock of hand blown glass pipes for fear of imminent government raid or a sudden rewording of laws that could make their very livelihood criminal overnight.

The real problem is that due to the saturation of the media during wartime of images of exploding buildings and market places, toppling statues and Iraqis pummeling pictures of Saddam Hussein, government actions like Operation Pipe Dreams are reduced to a six sentence blurb on page 10. While the rest of the world, including “Old Europe” and Sundance Kid to our Bush Cassidy, England, have introduced laws decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana in order to combat hard drug use, America has broadened its laws to attack citizens that don’t even sell or use drugs. Inciting yet another wave of panic and hysteria, sending more people into overstuffed jails and sending hundreds of millions of tax dollars, well up in smoke.

Feeling safer yet?

Paul Labich is a seniorcinema major. Email him at plabich1@ithaca.edu.