What do you expect to find at the counter of a convenience store? Candy, perhaps gum?

Late this summer I noticed something else. Rows of pipes that can be used to smoke meth and other drugs.

The small glass pipes have become popular items in some stores. Ask any former meth addict and they'll tell you what the pipes are for.

Ben Randolph is a recovering meth addict.

"You put the meth right down in there and you are good to go, just heat up the pipe," said Randolph as he held a pipe we purchased in a Clark County convenience store.

What makes the open sale of these glass pipes troubling is there are laws designed to prevent it. Federal and State statutes go into great detail about pipes designed to ingest, inhale or otherwise introduce drugs into the body. Glass pipes with no screens are mentioned specifically.

Unit 8 uncovered hundreds of these screenless glass pipes being sold in area convenience stores.

Half of the dozen stores we randomly visited stocked the pipes at the same counters where your kids could be buying candy.

Randolph said, "It sends a message that someday you are going to graduate from candy to what's under the case."

I showed what we uncovered to Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna while he was in Clark County talking about the meth problem.

It's a problem so massive, Vancouver police have said eighty percent of their calls are somehow related to meth. When I showed Rob Mckenna what we purchased in a Clark county store he said, "That looks like a meth pipe!" Mckenna says there are laws designed to restrict glass pipes like these for good reason.

"There is a direct connection between the availability of paraphernalia and the amount of drug use in a community," said Mckenna.

When I visited the stores we spotted selling the pipes many of the clerks told me the pipes were very popular and thought they were used to smoke tobacco.

There are stickers that say for tobacco use only on most of the pipes.

"I just kind of laugh because for tobacco use only is an absolute farce", said Randolph.

The Washington Attorney General calls the Tobacco only stickers a transparent attempt to try and get around the law. When I talked to a store manager in Washougal about the pipes he was selling, he said local police frequent his store nearly every day and have never spoken a word about his large selection of glass pipes.

"Nobody talked to me, Nobody ever talked to me," said Jin, the manager of the E Street market in Washougal.

The day we visited, his customers did plenty of talking.

"Oh that pipe is for meth and you've got Bongs in there too, water pipes," said Jeanie Donnely a customer at the market. The store manager listened and said he wasn't aware the pipes were used for drugs.

He immediately took all the glass pipes off his store's shelves.

He told me the pipes came from a local distributer who gave him a percentage of every pipe sold. He said the pipes were big sellers, but he thought they were for tobacco.

In many other stores around the metro area, glass pipes remain on shelves, tempting a new generation of potential meth addicts.

Following KGW's investigation Washington's Attorney General said, "what you found tells me the problem of paraphernalia is not being taken seriously at all in the local community. In the end, it will be up to local communities to decide whether it's time to demand that stores stop selling paraphernalia used for drugs."