Abbeville council creates pair of drug ordinances in Abbeville

Abbeville officials have finalized a pair of drug-related issues that have been discussed for more than a month.
The Abbeville City Council voted 5-0 each on ordinances that affect the sale of drug paraphernalia and synthetic drugs. The voting took place after a public hearing at Tuesday’s regular council meeting.
“The hope is that this will at least curtail some of the drug activity in our city,” said Councilman-at-Large Francis Plaisance, who brought the issues to the table late last year.
The ordinances regarding drug paraphernalia puts the city in line with the state statute. A portion of the state law, 40:1021, reads: All equipment, products, and materials of any kind which are used, intended for use, or designed for use in planting, propagating, cultivating, growing, harvesting, manufacturing, compounding, converting, producing, processing, preparing, testing, analyzing, packaging, repackaging, storing, containing, concealing, injecting, ingesting, inhaling, or otherwise introducing into the human body a controlled substance.
“We are making it uniform with the state law in every respect,” Plaisance said.
The issue does remain that a pipe in and of itself is not drug paraphernalia.
“Most people know what a bong is,” Lt. David Hardy explained to the council. “It’s a pipe used to smoke marijuana and other drugs. Just having a pipe by itself that has never been used is not paraphernalia. If the pipe has been used, or it is in close proximity of the drugs, makes it paraphernalia.”
As for the ordinance pertaining to synthetic drugs, which are drugs made chemically and have slight variations as to not fall under the definition of cannabis, the state law says the sale is illegal. The city’s ordinance relates to how the synthetic drug is labeled.
“Our ordinance is keeping with what has been passed in Lafayette and other areas,” Abbeville City Attorney Ike Funderburk explained. “We are not trying to get into the revolving door of defining what a synthetic drug is, so that (producers) can continually change it. What our ordinance is doing, like the one in Lafayette, is making it illegal for the distributor of the synthetic drugs to mislabel them, to call it something other than what it really is.
“This has a broader impact than the state law, which is trying to define each individual synthetic drug.”
While the new ordinances, which will go into effect 30 days from Tuesday, will give law enforcement more to work with, Councilman Francis Touchet Jr., District B, said the public can play a pivotal role.
“If we are going to make a difference with any of this,” Touchet said, “it is going to start with this community stepping forward when there is someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing.
“That is going to be a very important part of this. You can have whatever laws you want, but if we don’t have (citizens) cooperating with law enforcement, nothing will work.”
Councilman Brady Broussard Jr., District C, said he feels this is definitely a unified fight by city officials against the problem.
“We are not going to allow Abbeville to be a haven for drug use,” Broussard said. “This will be a mission that may never be complete, but if we stay up with it and compete with anybody who comes into this town and tries to operate such a thing that is a detriment to our children.”
Plaisance agreed.
“This stuff is killing kids all over the country,” Plaisance said. “Their behavior changes when they are on these synthetic drugs. If we can do anything in this city to discourage the use and sale of drugs and paraphernalia, I don’t care how hard it is, we should continue to follow it. If it saves one person, it’s worth the effort.
“This is a serious problem across our country. What we are doing is addressing it in Abbeville. Let’s start right here and worry about our kids and community.”