If you rode on the Tiger Trails buses recently, you may have noticed a new advertisement.
Above the hand grips on some of the buses is an ad for a place called Hi-Life Wonderland, a new head shop in the North Gate area just outside LSU’s campus. This raises troublesome questions for the University.
For the uninitiated, a head shop is a store that sells accessories and implements that are typically used to smoke cannabis. Hi-Life Wonderland and others head shops have also marketed so-called “herbal incense,” synthetic THC substitutes intended to give users a high mimicking the effects of cannabis.
Head shops insist the items they sell, such as glass pipes, bongs and vaporizers, are “for tobacco use only,” often putting this disclaimer in writing near the section containing these implements. Additionally, the stores sometimes make alterations to the items, ostensibly to prevent customers from using them illegally.
Despite such stores’ tenuous relationships with law enforcement, head shops are allowed to exist and operate throughout the United States.
Head shops sometimes use intentionally ambiguous names, such as The Ra Shop, to remain concealed from casual observers who aren’t familiar with their merchandise.
When one looks up at these Tiger Trails ads, however, it is not difficult to surmise what a store called Hi-Life Wonderland sells. While the boldness of the name is unquestionable, the decision to place these ads on University buses certainly raises a few.
On Sep. 9, 2010, The Daily Reveille reported that hookahs, water pipes sold at head shops and used primarily to smoke tobacco, had been added to a list of drug paraphernalia banned in the University’s residence halls.
According to the 2011-12 LSU Living on Campus handbook, “possession or use of drug related paraphernalia, including but not limited to bongs, grinders, hookahs and pipes is prohibited in and around the adjacent property of the residence halls and