To whom it may concern,
I have been a regular customer for quite a while at your business establishment. The incense and t-shirts have always been the focus of my attention when it comes to purchasing the products that your store offers.
On the matter of personal belief systems and decent ethical value principles, I am persuaded that unfortunately your stores cannot receive my patronage anymore. I'm sure I will not be missed, considering that the majority of your customers and your proceeds are established from the prevalent drug addiction epidemic in the greater Charlotte area.
I understand and I am knowledgeable of North Carolina laws and statutes governing such sales as well as Federal current laws. So by law, your business is protected by your employees' thorough training to not give sales, to anyone underage or of legal age, using drug-related jargon and references when shopping at your stores. Awesome, you are safe from prosecution.
The reality is, that by just offering the sale of these specific accessories for smoking ,(non-tobacco style pipes, rolling papers, brand names, marketing marijuana leaf promotional products, and gas mask apparatus'; you are aiding and abetting in the distribution, substance abuses, and drug addictions to crack, marijuana, hashish, and many more destructive harmful illegal substances. The rationale and justification, that it is only sold for tobacco and E-vapor type substances, and I am within the close boundaries of the legal mandates. However in all sincerity, in my long experienced life, I or anyone I know have yet once, ever witnessed or heard of anyone ever smoking "tobacco" from a gas-mask apparatus! But you are safe from prosecution. It's justified then?!
How many young college students, underage youths receiving "smoking accessories" from legal age purchasers, older adults and children's' lives have to be scarred and torn apart through drug addiction and its' wreckage; until your store's owners feel even one slight bit of remorse and accountabilities in this state of our local and national drug epidemic?
Yes, marijuana is legal for recreational use in a handful of states, and yes it is legal and does provide some medical benefits for individuals who "really" have a medical need in some states. Why is it that it is legal in only some states, and not in all of the United States? I have no problem in its use for that one purpose. Marijuana has thirty known carcinogens, it de-motivates young and older men and women, and usually serves as a handy gateway drug for harder substances such as crack cocaine, etc. It, like alcohol, also destroys the brain cells quite effectively, and leads to a host of physical and mental neurosis' side effects, not to mention the lives that have been destroyed because of substances abuse and automobile driving judgments and impairment. Our tax dollars, your tax dollars, also go into portions of the funding, of Federal and state drug rehabilitation programs throughout the nation and in our prison systems.
Alcohol is also a drug and should be treated the same. However alcohol sales are not illegal in the state of North Carolina. Marijuana, cocaine, crack, heroin, hashish, opium, etc. are illegal. Wonder why that is federally and state mandated differently? Your stores do not sell the actual drugs, so you're rationalized and justified, right, in your personal constitutions?
It's not your fault that people come to your establishment to purchase the pipes, hookahs, gas masks, rolling papers, grinders and seed separators, etc. that are "ONLY" for tobacco/e-vapes use. You do not make them purchase these items. However, I am certain you do not mind the large percentages of revenues received from the majority of sales in "smoking accessories".
You business owners have proven to be very resourceful entrepreneurs. Do you ever imagine those business skills and acumen could be used to sell other products and services, not related to substance abuse accessories? Do you really believe that offering the products at your stores, does not encourage, promote, and at the very least, influence what the minds of young impressionable adults view as American society "norms"?
Being an advocate for marijuana use does not justify the sell of drug abuse accessories.
But hey, "I don't have to shop at your store if I do not like it", right? As long as it's legal and you make profit, right? As if, that reality alone contributes to a better quality of life for our citizens in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina area. read more