A New Frontier in the War on Meth: A 40 Percent Tax on Bongs You Can’t Use To Smoke Meth

“Unlike smokers of weed or tobacco, a meth smoker doesn’t apply flame directly to the drug; one heats up the outside of the paraphernalia. Traditional pipes, bongs, or bubblers wouldn’t get the job done. Only a narrow range of glassware, such as test-tube-looking devices or “bubble” pipes, are good for meth consumption.

Yet Dawson’s bill applies the same heavy tax to all smoking implements, regardless of whether they could be used to smoke meth. Meanwhile, meth users still have ways to smoke without buying devices subject to that 40 percent tax. The glass tubes that cigars come in can work in a pinch. So can aluminum foil and a plastic straw.

Dawson, who also works as an investigator with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, candidly acknowledges that home-made paraphernalia exists, but seemingly argues that pushing people toward using them would be a virtue.

Using aluminum foil to smoke meth would “create a residue on there, so that would be drug paraphernalia,” he told Radio Iowa. “But what people are doing now is they are buying these glass pipes because if they encounter law enforcement, they can throw it on the ground and smash it right away and destroy the evidence.””

“Having passed the state senate, Dawson’s bill is currently working its way through the committee process in the Iowa House.”