After State Street head shops cleaned out their pipe selection to avoid prosecution for selling “drug paraphernalia,” Freedom skate and head shop closed down Friday and moved across the street to join Knuckleheads Tobacco and Gifts.

Corporate president Steve Agee said the consolidation was not a difficult decision because the same corporation owns Freedom and Knuckleheads.

“It was a corporate secret, so we could have something on either side of Pipefitter’s,” Agee said.

He said Freedom would not have survived through the winter because most of the store’s winter revenue came from pipe sales.

“I was hurting too,” Agee said in reference to Knuckleheads, which he manages.

However, the store’s business has been steady since the skate shop moved up to Knuckleheads.

“Now that the pipes are gone, those customers are gone too, but we’re getting a lot of new customers,” Agee said. “We have so much stuff now; we have more cigars than anybody.”

Knucklehead’s pipes are priced down to $10 and almost completely sold out.

Agee said a few landlords have offered to buy Freedom’s location at 511 State St. He hopes an offer to turn the store into a DJ shop will be accepted.

The Pipefitter’s business also changed drastically in response to the federal crackdown on pipe sales. Store manager Gregg Hinkley turned the store solely into a gift shop, saying in February that he decided to sell his pipes to take advantage of the frenzied pipe sales at the time rather than due to federal pressure.

Knuckleheads employee Wayne Patari II and Freedom employee Ryan Pierce said in February they sold all of the stores’ pipes to prevent the risk of prosecution after a string of drug-merchandise-related arrests announced in mid-February.

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

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

“People selling drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers,” Brown said Feb. 24.

“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.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the website shutdowns were necessary to prevent children from accessing the sites.