State Street head shops are clearing out their pipe stock this week in the midst of a federal crackdown on entrepreneurs that sell pipes and drug-related paraphernalia.

Knuckleheads Tobacco and Gifts, Pipefitter and Freedom stores have pipes on sale for half price with the intent to sell them all.

Knuckleheads employee Wayne Patari II and Freedom employee Ryan Pierce said they are selling all their pipes to prevent risk of prosecution after a string of drug merchandise-related arrests announced earlier this week.

“We’re getting rid of them so we don’t have to deal with any trouble,” Pierce said. “We don’t want to get stuck with anything and get screwed later.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft joined the Drug Enforcement Administration Monday to announce that 50 people had been charged with conspiracy to sell drug paraphernalia. The arrests were primarily in Pennsylvania and California.

Acting DEA Administrator John B. Brown III said the prosecution of the nation’s largest drug paraphernalia suppliers is a necessary part of the war on drugs.

“People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers,” Brown said Monday. “These criminals operate a multimillion-dollar enterprise, selling their paraphernalia in head shops, distributing out of huge warehouses and using the World Wide Web as a worldwide paraphernalia market,” he said, announcing the closure of 11 “illicit” websites selling drug merchandise.

Ashcroft said the website shutdowns were necessary to prevent children from accessing the sites.

Patari said the government’s intentions had the opposite effect on customers.

“They scare a bunch of people so they all run out and get what they want in the first place for cheaper,” Patari said.

A UW junior who was allegedly “giddy” over the sales said he didn’t think the government’s arrests would affect drug consumption.

“If people are going to smoke weed, they don’t necessarily need a pipe,” he said. “This is just a stupid ploy.”

Patari said customers had mixed reactions to the pipe clearance, with some gushing over the cheap deals and others lashing out at the government.

A UW junior who bought two pipes today said the government strategy against drugs was inappropriate.

“I’m upset with how they treated it as a drug bust,” he said. “Now there are a lot of glass-blowers without jobs.”

Other UW students were indifferent to the pipe sales.

“I couldn’t care less either way,” UW junior Justin Chang said.

Pipefitter manager Gregg Hinkley said the timing seemed right to sell all of his pipes but he did it to eventually slow down business and ease into semi-retirement.

Hinkley said he was a pipe collector in the 1970s and used his hobby to launch Pipefitter in 1972, importing pipes from Bali, India and South America.

He said he decided to tap into the current rush of pipe customers to ease off his hectic work schedule and convert the store to gift-based merchandise only. He also said he didn’t think the drug-paraphernalia crackdown applied to his store.

“I’ve always been upfront with the people uptown,” Hinkley said. “In 31 years we’ve never had a problem.”