Seriously, I’ll never cease to be amazed by how people just don’t care for the quality of objects which they use to combust plant matter and then inhale smoke from. It seems like that’s the sort of thing people with which people would appreciate a high standard of quality. Yet over and over I find myself disappointed to see atrociously cheap glass pipes sold in local head shops but made in China. Chinese manufacturing has affected a huge multitude of commercial goods and this is because China as a nation has extremely relaxed regulations and standards when it comes to the production of exportable goods. This means the cheapest labor is utilized across the widest scale possible to mass produce and then export. In the context of glass pipes, being made this cheap can be a huge hindrance and potentially really harmful.
First of all if you must get a specific design of a pipe that you love but can only find it on some sketchy website that will ship it to you from China, be sure to give it an absolutely thorough cleaning when you receive it, before you ever smoke out of it. This is extremely important because although it may not be a hugely common issue, some cheap glass pipes from China have been known to have small holes drilled through them in order to dupe customs agents by masquerading the pipe as a necklace with a string looped through the drilled hole. When they do this, however, there’s a pretty high potential for a fine glass dust to settle on the inside of the pipe below where the hole was drilled. You can guess what happens next surely. If someone’s so excited to smoke their pipe that they don’t think of cleaning it first, they might end up inhaling that residual glass dust as they toke their bowl of bud. Now imagine microscopic glass particles being inhaled into your lungs airways and causing all sorts of internal damage. These kind of horror stories are few and far between but when it comes to even the smallest chance of fine glass dust cutting up the inside of my lungs, I’d personally rather take zero chances whatsoever.