PHOENIX -- A CBS 5 investigation found crack pipes for sale in the same place customers buy candy for their kids.

Many convenience stores sell little glass tubes with roses in them. They look harmless enough, but those tubes are the major components of crack pipes.

A customer wanting to smoke crack would ask for "a rose in a tube," "wire mesh," "the works."

5 Investigates went undercover to expose how easy it is to buy crack pipes, which are illegal to sell.

The glass tubes cost only a few dollars, and in less than an hour, 5 Investigates bought them from three different neighborhood convenience stores.

Sold separately, a lighter, wire mesh and a glass tube are not illegal. Sold together, they're considered drug paraphernalia.

"This is against the law. We are very concerned about these types of operations," said Ramona Sanchez, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Sanchez said rose tubes are crack users' way of trying to circumvent the law, "but we all know that any item of this type is just used for one purpose."

The biggest problem is that convenience stores selling the $3 or $4 crack pipes can be found near parks, neighborhoods and schools in cities across the Valley.

Local police rarely enforce the federal law and federal agents admit these types of investigations take time.

"We need to build enough evidence … to determine that they know what they're doing is illegal," Sanchez said.

5 Investigates confronted the owners of several convenience stores selling the glass tubes. They said they didn't know what the tubes were being used for.

"That pisses me off," said Dorcus Guest Nelson, a homeowner who lives across the street from one of the stores.

She and her neighbors said they've been asking the owners of the Food n Things market for two years to stop selling crack pipes.

"I've been told that it was OK because actually, when we went in there, the guy told us that it was used for smoking -- they use it for regular smoking -- so it's OK or legal. That's how he justified it," Nelson said.

5 Investigates found only one store owner willing to take responsibility for the pipes. He said he would stop selling them.

But when 5 Investigates sent an undercover producer into the store a few days later, the clerk sold her all the components of a crack pipe.