Legal Question in Criminal Law in Virginia

Re: At what point is it considered ''paraphernalia?''

I would ask comedian Thomas Chong who recently did Federal time when some prosecutor from some state far away decided Chong's mail-order water pipes were really "paraphernalia."

Moral: People who want to test their constitutional rights by doing unpopular things risk being arrested, having to hire lawyers, and sometimes having to do time, and in many cases that's unfortunate, but that's life in America today.

Re: At what point is it considered ''paraphernalia?''

In regard to what your criminal exposure might be in the Commonwealth

in setting up a store vending the kinds of wares which you've described, I invite you to review the Virginia statutes having to do with drug paraphernalia which can be found at Secs. 18.2-265.1 et seq. of the Virginia Criminal Code and the litany of definitions regarding what can be considered paraphernalia and the proscriptions/penalties which may attach to the various uses of whatever may possibly fit into one or more of these definitions. To put it another way, this statutory array regarding paraphernalia proscribed under Virginia law might be likened to a kind of prosecutor's smorgasbord of sorts where the state is free to

pick and choose among the bountiful array of prosecutorial possibilties which can then be brought down in the form of criminal charges on the heads of the unwary ones(such as yourself) who may have naively thought that they were surely quite safe from prosecution by selling devices advertised as mere "water pipes".

Better forget it.