Results tagged “cigarette”

When the smoke clears from Albany's latest inept attempt to get a grip on the budget crisis, one casualty will likely be the state's anti-smoking campaign. Governor Paterson, a committed proponent of the anti-smoking program, has nevertheless proposed a $10 million cut in order to help address a $3.2 billion deficit. The cutback would reduce funding for programs that provide free nicotine patches and help Medicaid patients quit smoking, among other things. Naturally, the cigarette industry and its allies are passing around the cigars.

Some city landlords have begun prohibiting tenants from smoking inside their apartments, because of the dangers of second-hand smoke. A study recently found that secondhand smoke causes at least 35,000 deaths from heart disease and 3,000 deaths from lung cancer in nonsmokers nationwide each year—and New Yorkers are even more at risk because their dense urban environment. As one tobacco expert put it: "Smoke doesn’t know to stop at a doorway. It fills the full capacity of every indoor location in which the cigarette is smoked." So at least one major real estate company is now stepping in to stop the smoke before it starts.

On their way to outlawing smoking in public parks, beaches, and in your dreams, officials at the Health Department are moving forward with a plan to require graphic cigarette warning signs anywhere you buy smokes in NYC. The new signs will include information on how to quit, and, like the one seen here, will show the ugly side-effects of smoking. Some 12,000 retailers in all five boroughs are expected to display the signs by December, but the city will give them a two month grace period before issuing fines.

cigarette tax rose by $1.25 per pack (from $1.50 to $2.75). The Health Department says the price hike resulted in more than 2,700 calls to 311 for help to quit over the course of one week—three times the number of calls during the same period in the prior year. 300,000 fewer adult New Yorkers smoke than in 2002, which is partially due to price hikes, indoor smoking bans, and the growing realization that tracheotomies aren't so cool.

An 87-year-old man who was bicycling in Bethpage, Long Island died after his clothes apparently caught fire. Newsday reports that a FedEx driver saw Joseph Rusin "in flames and rolling on the ground on the front lawn of a home." The driver took "a fire extinguisher from his truck to put out the flames," while another witness called 911. Rusin was pronounced dead at Nassau County Medical Center. The fire is not considered suspicious; Nassau County fire officials believe Rusin, who was riding home from a supermarket with groceries, was smoking a cigarette, which ignited his nylon jacket.

In an effort to add to the state's coffers, Governor Paterson signed a law into bill that will "enforce the collection of excise taxes on cigarettes sold at Indian-owned stores." The bill requires manufacturers to have the state tax stamp on its tobacco products before selling them to retailers. The excise tax is $2.75, and it's expected that the bill will bring $400 million more in revenue. While, Indian tribes feel the move will hurt them, as smokers won't head to their stores to buy cigarettes any more, Governor Paterson pointed out the law has always stood, it just hasn't been "adequately applied for far too long" and gave" non-Indians easy access to tax-free cigarettes both on the reservations and over the internet." Mayor Bloomberg, who has sued over the untaxed cigarettes, is happy: "The bottom line is everybody should be paying taxes on cigarettes."

      

After his mother died from cancer, Dr. Robert Jackler of Stanford University worked through his grief by searching out print tobacco ads from the '20s through the '50s. Appearing in publications like Life and the Saturday Evening Post, the ads featured such cigarette-smoking luminaries as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, and Santa Claus. And of course there were plenty of models hired to pose as doctors and dentists for ads with slogans like, "38,381 Dentists Say, ‘Smoke Viceroys.' They can never stain your teeth." Because if it was only, say, 38,300 dentists, nobody would have bought it.

On Monday Mayor Bloomberg announced a lawsuit against the Poospatuck Indian reservation on Long Island, in an attempt to stop the untaxed sale of 11.3 million cartons of cigarettes on the reservation per year. Today the Times has a great, long article about how the smokes travel from the wholesaler through the reservation and to the streets of New York, where "$5 Men" like "Paco" stand on corners and whisper, "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs." Reporters at the reservation describe a booming business, where cigarette sales are made on a bustling main street and even out of residential trailers. One reporter saw a sign for Justin’s Smokes "on a tree outside a residential trailer. An occupant of the trailer ordered the reporter off the property, telling her it was not a cigarette shop. 'That’s just a sign on a tree,' the woman yelled."

The Seneca Nation is pressuring Governor Paterson to veto a bill that would tax cigarette sales to non-Indians; officials estimate the tax could generate $400 million in revenue, and Mayor Bloomberg recently said that tax revenue could save us from MTA fare hikes. The tribes argue that treaties dating to the 19th century make them exempt from state sales taxes; greedy white man legislators insist that sales to non-Indians are taxable. The debate is happening against the backdrop of a looming $6.4 billion deficit, and the Sun reports that Paterson could sign the bill as early as next week. But Seneca lawyer Robert Odawi Porter warns that would hurt the tribe's employment of 5,000 people and other economic benefits for western New York: "The state still comes out ahead. It just doesn't go into the Albany trough."