Crack pipe vending machines pop up in Suffolk County, NY

Sep 11, 2018

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First, you could get gum and bottled water, then laptops, and now it seems you can buy crack pipes from vending machines. Well, you can in at least one area of suburban Suffolk County, N.Y., Vice is reporting.

Students in the Brookhaven area of Long Island outside of New York City were headed back to school when they spotted a new crop of vending machines at street corners labeled “PENS,” but when they fed the machines the requested $2 in change, they found the boxes were actually dispensing makeshift crack pipe kits, Vice reported.

The machines have been labeled “PENS,” “S PENS” and “SKETCH PENS” but the “pens” that they spit out actually are filled with a glass tube and filters, according to Vice.

“You think you’ve heard of everything,” Town of Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine told reporters on Monday. “I continue to be surprised by the audacity of those that would break the law in promoting drugs and drug paraphernalia.”

Romaine added, “It’s a ceramic, glass pipe disguised as a pen.”

Community members are not having it and have destroyed two of the machines on their own, ABC 7 reported.

One angry resident smashed one of the machines to pieces, Medford, Long Island, resident Danielle Blom told ABC 7.

“We’ve been here for three years,” she told the station. “We’ve never had any problems, and now this. So it’s pretty disgusting.”

Suffolk County police will decide whether the placement of the machines should warrant criminal charges, ABC 7 reported.

“To sell a pipe is not illegal, but this is considered drug paraphernalia,” the station quoted Brookhaven, Long Island, Councilman Michael Loguercio as saying. “And it also is being dispensed from a machine that was installed illegally per town code,” he said.

Town of Brookhaven officials received complaints about the renegade machines over the weekend, according to ABC 7.

Pop up pen dispensers? Town of Brookhaven officials say people buying these pens in glass vials were using them as crack pipes. @News12LI pic.twitter.com/0Wl5MmsTQm

— Eileen Lehpamer (@ELehpamer12) September 10, 2018