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November 29, 2006
        As Atlantic City Eyes Smoking Ban, Casinos Fear Losses
        By Laura Mansnerus

ATLANTIC CITY — Here on the casino floors are the few square feet in New Jersey — indoors, anyway — where a person can go out and have a drink and a cigarette at the same time.

But that may soon change.

Less than a year after gaining an exemption from a statewide smoking ban from the New Jersey Legislature, casino owners are watching that slip from their grasp. Citing concerns about secondhand smoke, the City Council seems intent on establishing a ban of its own.

If the proposed ordinance passes, Atlantic City will see whether gamblers who smoke can be separated from their cigarettes or whether, as the owners of the city’s 11 casinos contend, they will take their business elsewhere.

“The day it passes, you won’t see me again,” Rob Catania of Williamstown, N.J., said during a break from a poker game at Resorts Atlantic City.

Mr. Catania, who comes here most Tuesdays, said that he would go to Connecticut or to Philadelphia, where casinos will open next year.

Several recent studies support the casino owners’ fears that they will lose business. An analysis of the Delaware smoking ban by Richard Thalheimer, an authority on the horse racing industry and casino gambling who teaches at the University of Louisville, found that the ban was followed by reductions of 11 percent to 19 percent in slot machine wagering at racetracks. The slot machine revenue recovered, but only because the tracks added machines, Mr. Thalheimer said.

Another study, commissioned last year by the Casino Association of New Jersey, a trade group, and using Delaware as a baseline, estimated that a ban in Atlantic City would depress annual gambling revenue, now about $5 billion, by about $1 billion after two years.

Still, the proposed smoking ban here seems to be sailing through. The ordinance has met little public opposition since it was unanimously introduced. A hearing on the measure is scheduled for today, and the Council is to vote on it Dec. 29.

The casino association said in a statement in October that the measure was “irresponsible” and “should be reconsidered.”

Joseph A. Corbo Jr., the president of the association, wrote in a local trade magazine, Casino Connection, that without the exemption, “we could find ourselves in a much weaker competitive position in the very near future.”

But Councilman G. Bruce Ward, when asked whether the casino association was lobbying council members, said, “If it is, it’s quiet.” Mr. Ward, a health care lawyer, is a leading sponsor of the antismoking ordinance. “I don’t think they ever thought the whole state was going to go smoke-free and they would continue to have this exemption,” he said. “You’ve got a national movement now.”

Supporters of the ban say restaurants and bars in other cities have not just survived the restrictions but thrived, though bar and restaurant owners in Atlantic City say that with the casinos exempt from the ban they cannot compete.

Lewis Rothbart, the director of the Licensed Beverage Association, put it this way: “Our position all along is that there should be a level playing field and that the casinos should not be given any special privileges.”

Since the statewide ban took effect on April 15, the casino industry — which estimates that gamblers who smoke account for half of its customers in Atlantic City — has found ways to accommodate smokers who would rather sit at a bar than a slot machine. Over the summer, the casinos drew smokers to expanded outdoor bars, and most have also opened bars on their casino floors.

For other Atlantic City bars, however, “the closer you are to the casinos, the more devastating the impact,” said Cathy Burke, the owner of the Irish Pub, which is within shouting distance of the Boardwalk.

Ms. Burke said that about 70 percent of her bar customers were smokers. Last summer, she said, many crowded onto the pub’s newly expanded patio.

“They don’t care if it’s 110 degrees,” she said. “They’ll go outside.”

But with colder weather, she said, she expects business to drop considerably.

Restaurant owners across the state opposed the casino exemption from the beginning, exasperated by legislators who said a smoking ban would not hurt their businesses but, at the same time, seemed persuaded that it would imperil the casino industry.

It was never clear just which legislators were holding out for the casino exemption.

Regina Carlson, the director of the New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution, known as GASP, said: “We’ve never heard so many speak, and speak so eloquently, about how sorry they were that the casinos weren’t included in this. The perception was, they couldn’t do it, which is kind of sad when a Legislature feels it can’t stand up to the casinos. There’s clearly more here than meets the eye. There always is when tobacco is involved.”

State Senator John H. Adler, a Democrat from Camden County and a longtime proponent of the ban, said that the exemption was a political necessity. But, he noted, “We left open the opportunity for municipalities to legislate to a broader degree than we did.”

In fact, he said, he thought the casinos “will end up making money” by attracting people who do not want to gamble amid ashtrays and secondhand smoke.

As to where smokers will go, speculation centers on southeastern Pennsylvania, Connecticut and casinos on Indian reservations in upstate New York.

Nevada will continue to allow smoking on casino floors, even though voters approved a ballot measure this month that prohibits smoking at restaurants and bars that serve food. But because three-quarters of visitors to Atlantic City live in New Jersey and the Philadelphia and New York metropolitan areas, Las Vegas is not considered major competition.

Pennsylvania’s new casino legislation allows only slot machines. But slots parlors will soon spring up along the Delaware River from Bucks County south to Philadelphia and Chester, Pa. And while the casinos will be subject to local smoking ordinances, it is not clear whether Philadelphia’s recently enacted smoking restrictions, which apply in restaurants and bars, will extend to the casinos.

For now, there is no smoking ban in Chester, where a new harness track with up to 5,000 slot machines is to open in January.

“That’s going to pick up even more business from Delaware and Atlantic City” if Atlantic City’s casinos lose their exemption, Mr. Thalheimer said.

At Resorts, Mr. Catania, snuffing out his cigarette as he returned to the poker table, said he could depend on Connecticut. The two casinos there, on tribal lands, are not subject to the statewide smoking ban. “They have to let you smoke,” he said.

November 6, 2006
        Tribes Fear Cigarette Tax Law Could Destroy Their Prosperity
        By Corey Kilgannon

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. — It was late October, and the sun was nearly setting behind the Shinnecock Hills, illuminating the Indian-owned smoke shops along Montauk Highway like museum exhibits.

Inside one of the shops, the Shinnecock Indian Outpost, customers lined up to buy packs and cartons of tax-free cigarettes, at less than half the price they might pay at the nearby 7-Eleven.

Outsiders feeding their nicotine addiction: this is what keeps the Shinnecocks alive, said the owner, Lance Gumbs. He sat in the store explaining the history of the Shinnecock cigarette trade and how it is now being threatened by a federal lawsuit and by an expected push by a neighboring government, New York State, to end the longstanding practice of selling tax-free cigarettes to non-Indians on Indian reservations.

The owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain has sued to stop those sales. And the state, which estimates it loses as much as $576 million a year in the sale of untaxed cigarettes, is expected to begin enforcing a law that would compel reservation retailers to begin collecting a tax of $1.50 per pack.

Mr. Gumbs, the Shinnecocks’ tribal chairman, fears disaster if that happens.

“You cut off the cigarette revenue, and you cut off the livelihood of the tribe,” said Mr. Gumbs. “This would annihilate us. Everyone would be out of business and back on the welfare rolls. It would be a nightmare scenario.”

Historically, New York State has not collected cigarette taxes from tribes within its borders because they are considered sovereign nations, so Indian-owned smoke shops have long sold cigarettes at far lower prices than non-Indian competitors.

Over the past 20 years, cigarette tax increases have drastically driven up retail prices, while reservation prices have remained relatively low. As a result, cigarette sales have become a booming business on the reservations, including those of the Shinnecocks on Eastern Long Island, and their neighbors, the Unkechaug nation.

Shinnecock and Unkechaug tribal leaders, who credit cigarette revenue with pulling their people out of a quicksand of unemployment, substance abuse and other ills, now fear losing their profitable niche as discount cigarette purveyors.

But John A. Catsimatidis, who owns the Gristedes and other supermarket and convenience store chains, says those sales illegally undercut his cigarette business. His lawsuit, filed in March in United States District Court in Brooklyn, seeks to force Indian retailers to buy cigarettes from wholesalers at the taxed price, and asks for $20 million from the two tribes’ cigarette retailers, the amount he claims he has lost.

“The illegal discount pricing by Indian tribes has cost legitimate retailers” more than $1 billion a year in sales revenue, according to his lawsuit.

“I’ve lost a lot of money to the Indian sales, but that’s not the issue,” Mr. Catsimatidis said in an interview. “I’m suing on principle. Why are these smoke shops allowed to work outside the law and damage everyone else’s business?”

Both of the Long Island Indian nations filed motions in October to dismiss Mr. Catsimatidis’s suit. Tribal members appeared in court in traditional ceremonial outfits, as lawyers for both sides presented arguments to Judge Carol Amon, who has yet to issue a ruling.

The two Indian nations, like the other tribes in New York State, are also bracing for the state to begin enforcing a law that took effect March 1 requiring New York to collect taxes from wholesalers who sell to reservations. The Long Island tribes are about an hour’s drive from Queens.

Gov. George E. Pataki has refrained from enforcing the law, but Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the candidate for governor who is leading in the polls, supports it. As attorney general, he has pressured wholesalers to stop selling tax-free cigarettes to tribes, and fought cigarette sales over the Internet and through the mail.

“The smoke shops are the heart and soul of the economy on this reservation,” said Harry Wallace, the chief of the Unkechaug Tribal Nation. “This is nothing more than an attempt to challenge our Indianness and gain control.”

There are some 250 Unkechaugs living on the 50-acre Poospatuck reservation, which is some 20 miles to the west of the Shinnecocks, in what is now the town of Mastic. Chief Wallace, who is a lawyer, owns a smoke shop on the reservation, which is nestled deep in the corner of a suburban neighborhood on the banks of the Mastic River.

Chief Wallace admits that the sale of untaxed cigarettes gives his tribe an advantage, but he offered this context: Since settlers first came to the Long Island’s East End in 1640, Indian tribes have steadily been deprived of their land, livelihoods and traditions, and have become boxed into small reservations. About the only thing the tribes have retained is their sovereignty and the right to conduct tax-free business.

By restoring earning power to the community, untaxed cigarettes have breathed fresh life into a threatened Indian culture. Chief Wallace called the lawsuit and the state’s tax policy “an attempt to eliminate us as entities and intimidate us and threaten our people with extinction.”

“They want economic control so we revert back to the status of subservient dependents and go back on welfare,” he said, his voice shaking with anger as he sat in his office surrounded by mounds of legal files for use in his legal defense of untaxed cigarette sales.

The state sets minimum price levels for retailers and imposes a sales tax of $1.50 per pack. New York City imposes an extra $1.50 per pack.

A recent study by the State Health Department found that 37 percent of New York’s smokers say they buy cigarettes “from low-price (mainly untaxed) sources.” The number was higher for people who live near Indian reservations.

The study estimates that the state loses $436 million to $576 million in revenue from untaxed sales. Convenience stores near the reservations typically sell major-brand cigarettes for roughly $5.50 a pack, a price the reservation smoke shops can beat by $2. At the Poospatuck reservation, for example, a 10-pack carton of Parliament cigarettes costs about $33, but it costs $55 in nearby stores.

Barbara Cahill, 45, of Mastic Beach, is a regular customer. Once a week, she buys her Parliaments on the Poospatuck reservation, which she said saves her more than $90 a month.

“That’s enough to pay my cable bill,” she said on Friday after buying her cigarettes at the reservation. “Why wouldn’t I go where it’s cheaper? I already pay $6,000 a year in property taxes, plus gas taxes, sales tax. This business is all the reservation has to keep it going.”

The customers range from local landscapers in dusty pickup trucks to golfers in luxury cars. There were Harley riders, surfers, students and mothers with children waiting in the back seat. Whether buying by the pack or by the carton, they said it was more than worth it to go out of their way to get discounted cigarettes.

New York requires wholesalers to buy a $1.50 per pack tax stamp for all cigarettes sold to non-Indian retailers. The new law, once enforced, would also require wholesalers to buy tax stamps for the cigarettes they sell to Indian retailers. But those retailers would be allowed to buy a certain number of unstamped cigarettes to sell tax-free to customers they knew to be members of their tribe.

For now, business is brisk on the reservations. In late October, five cashiers were busy making sales at the Peace Pipe Smoke Shop, which has a walk-up express window. But business is not always smooth. Several months earlier, Suffolk County police officers stood at the entrances to the Poospatuck reservation and began issuing summonses to smoke shop customers, but desisted after Chief Wallace threatened legal action.

As on the Poospatuck reservation, a handful of bustling smoke shops are the hub of activity on Shinnecock territory and serve as the face of the tribe to the outside world. Billboards warn outsiders that they are “Entering Shinnecock Territory” and risking arrest if they trespass.

The half-dozen smoke shops on the fringe of the Hamptons include a threadbare drive-up stand, a camper and a large metal shipping container with a cutout doorway. They line a stretch of Montauk Highway that leads east into Southampton’s village, with its upscale shops and well-heeled shoppers.

The shops employ 70 heads of households on the 800-acre Shinnecock reservation, which has roughly 550 residents, Mr. Gumbs said. The Shinnecocks, who are also seeking to open a casino on their land, are members of one of the oldest self-governing Native American tribes, he said, and have lived on the East End for thousands of years, long before New York State and its tax laws.

“We’re not a part of New York State,” he said. “This is like New York taxing New Jersey.”

August 15, 2006
Bloomberg Donating $125 Million to Anti-Smoking Efforts
By Diane Cardwell

Taking a significant step toward becoming a full-time philanthropist after leaving office, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg pledged today to spend $125 million of his own money to build a global anti-smoking campaign.

The donation, to be funneled to existing organizations over two years, is the largest single contribution to global tobacco-control efforts, anti-smoking advocates said. And beyond that, it shows how Mr. Bloomberg, who made banning smoking in bars and restaurants a focus of his first term, plans to amplify his work in office as he begins building his charitable foundation.

“I think we’ve learned some important things about how we convince people to stop smoking,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at NBC television studios. “It is one of the world’s biggest killers and it has sadly been overlooked by the philanthropic community.”

Under the plan, Mr. Bloomberg would spend the money to create and support programs aimed at helping the world become tobacco free. The campaign would use several approaches, including developing and expanding quitting and prevention programs, encouraging the adoption of New York-style tobacco taxes and smoking bans, and designing a system to track tobacco use and efforts to stop it worldwide.

The campaign would also work to change the image of tobacco, support efforts to educate communities about its harms, create a global clearinghouse for anti-tobacco ads and bring together a legal consortium to assist in drafting and passing legislation. A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, Robert Lawson, declined to identify the organizations the campaign would work with, saying that arrangements had yet to be made final.

Mr. Bloomberg, one of the country’s richest people, has long said that he plans to give away the bulk of his fortune, estimated by Forbes this year at $5.1 billion, and he has been steadily increasing his philanthropic giving. In 1997, he gave $26.6 million to charity; last year, he ranked seventh among the nation’s philanthropists in a survey conducted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, giving away $144 million.

Over the years, he has often made large gifts to academic or health-oriented institutions — the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, where he was an undergraduate, now bears his name — and a series of smaller, ostensibly anonymous gifts to arts and social service groups.

This time, however, Mr. Bloomberg said it made more sense to announce his plans, both out of a desire to attract people with good ideas to his efforts and because once it became part of a foundation, people would find out anyway. Mr. Bloomberg is in the midst of buying a $45 million mansion on the Upper East Side to house the foundation, which is likely to focus on his primary areas of interest, including education, the arts and public health, perhaps as first among equals.

Speaking of the foundation, he said: “I plan to try to focus my resources where we can make a difference in improving the health and the quality of life of people in New York City, in the state, in the country and even around the world.”

Public health advocates greeted news of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan with praise. Dr. Prabhat Jha, a professor of epidemiology at St. Michael’s Hospital at the University of Toronto and an expert on tobacco control, said that if the money was spent the right way, it could make a tremendous difference in curtailing tobacco use.

“If Mayor Bloomberg can help governments take tobacco seriously, then it will have an impact,” he said. “Once governments take tobacco seriously, they can figure out that there are a few really effective interventions.” Those include raising the price of tobacco through taxes, clean air laws that restrict public smoking, prominent warning labels and clear information about the consequences of tobacco use.

Dr. Jha said the fact that Mr. Bloomberg was getting up on an “international soapbox and speaking about tobacco” was a contribution in itself. But he cautioned that the money should be used to help build public consensus about tobacco dangers and political support for tackling them, especially in poor countries with high smoking rates.

“The details matter,” he said. If the money is well spent and focused on countries like India, China, Nigeria and Indonesia rather than on institutional overhead in the West, he said, “you could have a real bang for the buck.”

March 26, 2006
        Dark 2BR Loft? That's Code for a Club
        By Melena Ryzik

AT midnight one recent Friday, dozens of people lined up in one of Brooklyn's bleakest warehouse districts, waiting to enter a rock show. Tickets had been sold at a Greenpoint record store, but the show's address was only revealed to buyers at the last minute by e-mail.

A ticket taker stamped the hands of nearly 500 fans who eventually jammed into a room to drink beer and hear the Black Dice, local favorites. The band's dressing room was a bit odd: there was a bed in it. The bathroom for the audience had somebody's used toothbrush and a package of Q-tips. A big mural in the hall read, "Home Sweet Home."

This was no rock club. This was someone's home.

The loft, shared by several art school graduates in a desolate part of Bushwick, is transformed every other month into an underground club, the High Five.

"I've always been pretty obsessed with underground music," said Peter Buxton, 24, one of the roommates. "In the back of my head I was thinking it would be cool to do shows. And as soon we spotted this loft, we thought it would be a crime not to do something."

Mr. Buxton and his roommates, who make enough money from their bimonthly shows to cover the $2,800 rent for their loft, have plenty of company around the city.

From former industrial lofts in Brooklyn and Queens to stylish pads in Manhattan's meatpacking district, living quarters are being used as cash-producing spaces for under-the-radar parties.

Given the high costs and stringent laws governing licensed night spots — from no-smoking ordinances to laws regulating closing hours, alcohol sales and dancing — underground parties, where guests can smoke, boogie and drink as long as they like, seem to have an increasing appeal, in no small part because they are illicit.

"It feels super-sneaky," said Solana Larson, 26, a Brooklynite who went to a party in an apartment in the meatpacking district. "I brought some friends, and they were like, 'Wow, this is so underground.' You can't help but feel like it's kind of a select crowd."

Organizers employ various tactics to avoid attracting police attention, including checking guests' identification to make sure they are 21 and asking them to sign a release form. Shadi Shahrokhi, a host of parties in his loft in the meatpacking district, puts his neighbors in the expensive Maritime hotel for the night to avoid having them file noise complaints with authorities.

"This is a much more relaxed atmosphere," said Dave, a patron at the Black Dice show in Bushwick. He declined to give his full name because, he said, he works for the government. He described his age as "grown-up," which in that crowd meant older than 35. "Clubs are so restrictive," he said. "If you've been to the Bowery Ballroom, all the bouncers are scowling. Here it's like being in someone's living room, because you are."

That sense — of being outside the club establishment — is what seems to attract patrons like Emily Spurr, 23, who works in advertising. "Everyone likes to feel like a rebel in a little way," she said at the High Five.

Many organizers said their landlords turn a blind eye as long as the rent is paid on time and there is no trouble with authorities. "The building manager was on my case, but I think he just wanted me to invite him," said Karen Williams, 46, a theater artist who recently started giving parties in her Chinatown loft. (She did not invite him, she said.)

"The club scene can be a drag," said Ms. Williams, a veteran of the 80's-era East Village. Conventional clubs are "expensive, and there can be an attitude," she said. "I just wanted to have fun."

Despite efforts to keep the parties secret and under the radar of authorities, it can be hard to disguise that hundreds of people are crowded into a living space, swilling beer and dancing to loud music.

At the last Buyrum party, the kitchen-cum-bar was doing a brisk business in Coronas and rum and Cokes. The dance floor was packed, videos played on a screen, and a dozen people were smoking on benches in the front of the apartment.

March 21, 2006
        State to Forgo Cigarette Tax to Keep Peace With Indians
        By David Staba

BUFFALO — Across the street from Randy's Smoke Shop on the Tuscarora reservation near Niagara Falls sits a pile of tires and wood pallets, a reminder of the fires set during American Indian demonstrations against state tax policies in 1997 that closed several Interstate highways.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of those protests, the Pataki administration has said it will not enforce a law taxing cigarettes and other goods sold to non-Indians at stores on Indian reservations across the state. Gov. George E. Pataki's budget proposal calls for delaying enforcement of the law, which took effect on March 1, until next year.

"Our goal has always been to solve this matter through cooperation instead of confrontation," said Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for the governor. "The Tax Department has indicated it will continue its current policy as the governor and Legislature discuss these matters."

Administration officials have said they are concerned that a repeat of the 1997 protests could slow interstate commerce, divert trucks carrying hazardous loads through heavily populated communities if the Interstates are blockaded again, and cost the state millions of dollars in state police expenses.

Indian business owners assert that the tax law infringes on Indian sovereignty, is virtually unenforceable and will hurt stores that generate important economic activity on the reservations.

"How are we supposed to live?" said Pauline Chrysler, whose son, Randy Chrysler, is a smoke shop owner.

But the Pataki administration's decision to delay enforcement of the new law has also fueled a partisan debate in Albany, where many Democrats have criticized the Republican governor for ignoring a significant source of revenue, because the state is not getting the $1.50-a-pack taxes it collects on cigarettes sold everywhere else in the state.

Last month, Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer suggested that wholesalers who continued supplying cigarettes lacking a tax stamp, which sell for as little as half as much as cigarettes in nonreservation stores, to Indian merchants could lose their licenses. Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, is running to replace Mr. Pataki, a Republican who is leaving office at the end of the year.

The latest budget bill passed by the Democratic-controlled State Assembly also calls for tax collections to begin immediately, with wholesalers facing penalties that could include loss of their licenses.

"You can't announce to the world that a law will simply be ignored and not enforced," Mr. Spitzer has said. Marc Violette, a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, declined comment on Friday's clarifications by the Pataki administration.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that states have the right to collect sales tax on purchases by non-Indians at reservation stores.

The conflicting messages from Albany have created confusion among Indian business owners and their wholesalers.

Last Tuesday, one of the largest wholesalers to stores on the Seneca and Tuscarora reservations notified store owners there that it would stop shipping the unstamped cigarettes. But by Friday, a lawyer for the wholesaler said he had received word from the Tax Department that shipments of unstamped cigarettes could continue.

Mr. Chrysler said he laid off about a dozen of his 30 employees shortly after being notified by the wholesaler that it was stopping shipments last week. By Thursday afternoon, customers were limited to one carton each in an effort to stretch dwindling supplies.

"All we're concerned about is knowing one way or another whether that policy (of nonenforcement) is going to continue," said Joseph E. Zdarsky, a lawyer for the wholesaler, Milhem Attea and Sons of Buffalo. "If it didn't, theoretically, someone could assess taxes against our client in crippling amounts."

The profits from sales of tax-free cigarettes and gasoline have helped spawn other Indian businesses. One of Mr. Chrysler's brothers started a bottled-water supplier, while another opened a sneaker shop, both on the same property as his store.

"They know there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow here," Mr. Chrysler, who has owned the store for 16 years, said of his employees, many of whom are related to him. "But it gives them pride and dignity, so they can go home and be a father or a mother — they can be a provider."

State Senator George D. Maziarz, a Republican whose district includes the Tuscarora reservation, said postponing a resolution doesn't solve the issue.

"It's like a train wreck that everybody sees coming, but nobody knows how to avoid it," Mr. Maziarz said.

March 10, 2006
        Study Says Teenagers Are Avidly Shunning Cigarettes
        By Sewell Chan

Smoking among New York City teenagers has shown a startling decline over the last four years, with a survey of smoking habits finding that just 11 percent of public high school students now smoke.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who announced the findings yesterday, attributed the decline to higher cigarette taxes, which have raised the price of a pack to as high as $8, and to a ban on workplace smoking. But the declines were also reflective of nationwide trends showing that teenagers are increasingly shunning smoking.

The city's study showed that 30,000 out of 280,000 high school students had smoked at least one cigarette in the last month and that the figure had fallen by half since 1997, when 23 percent of students smoked. In 2001, that proportion had fallen to 18 percent.

By comparison, the 2003 National Risk Behavior Survey, the most recent national survey available, concluded that 21.9 percent of high school students in the United States smoked. The next such survey is to be released later this year.

The mayor announced the city results at a news conference at the High School for Art and Design on the East Side. The survey, conducted every two years since 1997, involved a representative sample of students in the 9th through 12th grades at 87 high schools across the five boroughs; it was conducted last year by an outside research firm using protocols approved by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings suggest that the stereotype of the urbane, smoking teenager seen in films like "West Side Story" does not reflect a present-day reality, with students, particularly those in poorer neighborhoods, not smoking.

The study found that smoking is one of the rare health problems that is not concentrated in neighborhoods like the South Bronx, Harlem and north-central Brooklyn. Those three areas — cited by the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for having some of the worst health problems — actually have lower rates of smoking among youths than the rest of the city.

Instead, the survey found that smoking rates were highest among white students (29 percent), students on Staten Island (23 percent) and girls (12 percent). Among white girls, 35 percent said they smoked, compared with 24 percent of white boys.

The causes for the relatively high prevalence of smoking in those groups are not clearly understood. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the health commissioner, said the rates may reflect higher percentages of parental smoking on Staten Island and "cultural norms" that make white students more susceptible to film, television and Internet images that glorify smoking.

Indeed, the biggest declines in youth smoking since 1997 have been among black and Hispanic students. They are on the whole poorer than white students, a factor that may discourage smoking as cigarette taxes rise.

Mr. Bloomberg has identified himself as a public health advocate and has repeatedly criticized the tobacco industry; he echoed both themes yesterday by calling for the state to raise the city's part of the cigarette tax and by accusing the tobacco industry of trying to influence children. The mayor, who is 64, also referred to his personal experiences.

"I used to smoke as a young man, so I know how strong the addiction is and how hard it is to beat it — but it can be beat, and of course the best way to beat it is never getting hooked in the first place," he said, adding that children "are bombarded each day with messages, both subtle and overt, encouraging them to smoke."

The American Cancer Society said the survey results were encouraging and urged Albany to pass Mr. Bloomberg's proposal to raise the tax on cigarettes bought in the city from $3 to $3.50. "By further increasing taxes, strictly enforcing laws about who can buy cigarettes, targeting education to the heaviest smokers and securing clean indoor air for everyone, we can continue this hopeful and healthful trend," said Kris Kim, executive vice president of the cancer society's New York and New Jersey division.

Jennifer L. Golisch, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA, the country's largest cigarette manufacturer, said the company had spent $1 billion to prevent youth smoking since 1998 and had not advertised its brands in general-circulation magazines and newspapers last year and so far this year. "Our products are intended for adults only," she said, adding that the company's marketing programs "comply with, and in many instances, go beyond what the applicable laws and state settlement agreements require."

March 8, 2006
        Settlement Reached to Pursue Online Cigarette Sales Taxes
        By Sewell Chan

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday announced a settlement with an online cigarette vendor that will allow the city to pursue residents for up to $33 million in unpaid excise taxes. It was the largest such settlement, officials said, since the city sued dozens of companies and individuals in 2003 for illegally selling cigarettes over the Internet to city residents.

A 2000 state law banned direct sales of cigarettes over the Internet and by telephone or mail. Tobacco companies challenged the ban, but a federal appellate court upheld it in February 2003. The state began enforcing the law that June.

Officials acknowledge, however, that online cigarette sales are still commonplace, and say that when they occur, the state and city are unfairly cheated of tax revenues.

Even while the state ban was being challenged, the city began its own effort in January 2003 to pursue Internet cigarette vendors for failing to report sales and excise taxes. It has filed four lawsuits against about 35 companies and individuals, alleging that they had failed to file federal Jenkins Act reports, which are intended to alert state tax authorities to out-of-state cigarette purchases so that the purchases can be subject to local taxes.

The most recent settlement was filed last Wednesday in Federal Bankruptcy Court in Tampa, Fla. The online cigarette vendor, eSmokes, agreed to give the city an electronic database of all its sales to addresses in New York State from 2000 to mid-2003. The company also agreed to stop selling cigarettes to customers in New York State. The company, which began operations in 1999, filed for bankruptcy protection last May.

Eric Proshansky, deputy chief of affirmative litigation for the city's Law Department, said that eSmokes had turned over seven spreadsheets containing records on about 140,000 sales. However, many of the records may be duplicates.

The city's Finance Department will sort the data and send tax bills to city residents. In the past, such collection efforts have yielded 65 percent of the taxes owed; efforts continue to collect the remainder.

In a separate effort, Mr. Bloomberg has urged the state to raise the city's share of the state cigarette tax to $2 from $1.50 per pack. Smokers also pay $1.50 in state tax.

February 5, 2006
        Guy Walks Into a Bar
        By Nicholas Kulish

Recently my friend Brandon and I walked along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn looking for a place to watch a football game and to quench our thirst for a cold brew. I pushed open the door and we were headed for a pair of empty stools when we both stopped cold. The bar was packed with under-age patrons.

Some of them stumbled around the pub, others stood on chairs shouting. A few lay back, heads lolling, looking ready to be carried out. "Stroller derby," Brandon muttered, and we left.

Call me a hard-liner or a party pooper, but I say 21 means 21. No more babies in bars.

Obviously, today's working parents are eager to spend a little quality time with their youngsters, and we're used to seeing small fry everywhere from fancy restaurants to art gallery openings. I've adjusted to the idea that many otherwise reasonable people believe there's no point in paying for a baby sitter on movie night when their toddler can entertain himself by kicking the back of my chair.

But bars? A group of 19-year-olds would be stopped at the door, but no one has the guts to card the really little ones. I blame the law of unintended consequences — in this case, the no-smoking movement. Sure, cigarettes are a public health problem. But the smoky bar filled with unhealthy grown-ups at least felt like a bar. Now, the local gin joints look more like jungle gyms.

It was the bartenders' exposure to secondhand smoke that inspired the tobacco ban. Now their lungs are presumably healthier. But they are saddled with a raft of tiny patrons who never buy drinks. They bring their own bottles. And they never tip.

January 24, 2006
        Bloomberg Would Put Higher Tax On Cigarettes
        By Jim Rutenberg

ALBANY - Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called for a further rise in the city's portion of the cigarette tax during testimony here on Monday in which he skewered parts of Gov. George E. Pataki's proposed budget as deeply flawed and unfair to New York City.

Aides to Mr. Bloomberg said he would lay out his ideas for a higher cigarette tax in his State of the City address on Thursday, and make a more detailed proposal when he unveils his own budget plans a few weeks after that.

But in comments to reporters after his testimony at the Legislative Office Building here on Monday afternoon, Mr. Bloomberg indicated that he believed a rise of 50 cents a pack was possible. Smokers in the city now pay $3 a pack in taxes.

"I think another 50 cents might be good," he said. "There's a clear correlation: You raise your cigarette taxes, fewer children go and smoke."

Mr. Bloomberg said the extra revenues would go toward new public health initiatives to reduce smoking.

Mr. Bloomberg's cigarette proposal, which would have to be approved by the Legislature, came as he criticized Mr. Pataki's complicated proposal rejiggering cigarette taxes statewide. In contrast to Mr. Bloomberg's proposal to raise the city's share of the tax, the Pataki budget would reduce it.

That budget proposal would raise revenues for the state for various health programs while reducing the difference between New York City and out-of-city cigarette prices. It would raise cigarette taxes outside New York City to $2.50 from $1.50 per pack while reducing the city's portion of the cigarette tax to 50 cents from $1.50 - so that statewide, smokers would pay $2.50 in taxes and city dwellers would continue to pay $3. The state would then reimburse the city the $78 million it would lose annually because of the change.

But Mr. Bloomberg said in his testimony yesterday that there was no way to ensure that that money would always go to the city. "This is a classic case of, 'If it ain't broken, don't fix it,' " he said.

Mr. Pataki's proposed changes in the cigarette tax provided but one target for Mr. Bloomberg yesterday. His critique was followed by similar testimony from the new City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn.

The mayor called upon the state to follow the city and eliminate its portion of the "job-killing tax" on clothing items costing $110 or less, as did Ms. Quinn. He said the governor's proposed Medicaid cuts and cost reductions threatened the city's fragile hospital system.

But he reserved his fiercest criticism for what he termed "this ridiculous imbalance" between what city residents provide to the state in taxes and what they get back from the state in education money.

"Let me tell you, we are not going to stand by and let this happen," the mayor said. "We've been shortchanged for too long, and we'll use every resource at our disposal to correct this outrageous injustice."

During her testimony, Ms. Quinn said: "The administration and the Council are united and determined on this issue. We will fight on behalf of our city's children until the state fulfills its obligation."

Mayor Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn also both complained that one of Governor Pataki's main budget proposals - giving $400 property tax rebate checks to homeowners in school districts that limit their spending - left New York City out in the cold. The governor's budget states that no rebates shall be issued to property owners in any city with a population of one million or more. Only one city in New York has a population of one million or more: New York City. And the school districts in the municipalities whose residents do get the rebate will be reimbursed, for a total of $530 million.

"Of this $530 million in new education aid," Mr. Bloomberg said, "We get zero percent."

Mr. Bloomberg said that since the state is not sharply increasing education aid to comply with a court order, the city will be forced to cut $1.8 billion from its school building plan, causing the cancellation or delay of several projects, including a new elementary and middle school for Lower Manhattan, a beloved project of the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

Speaking with reporters earlier, Mr. Pataki shrugged off Mr. Bloomberg's complaints about school aid. "I've yet to have the mayor come and not say that," Mr. Pataki said, adding that the state was picking up $770 million in costs the city was not expecting it to bear.

But over all, the tension between the two Republicans played out in subtle ways, with neither taking on the other personally.

Mr. Bloomberg went out of his way to compliment Mr. Pataki personally, saying: "He's been a good governor for the last 12 years and he's trying to do what he thinks is right for 18 million people. What I've got to do is I've got to fight for the rights of 8 million people."

January 22, 2006
        Smoking and Fuming
        By Op Ed Contributor Javier Marias

Madrid - FOR far too many years, almost 40, the people of Spain were treated like minors by Franco's dictatorship. But it seems that some people among us still yearn for that era. The new antismoking law in Spain, which went into effect with the new year and bans smoking in workplaces and restricts it in many bars and restaurants, is a case in point: it is a clear example of the state trying to regulate citizens' private lives and customs. As such, it is a measure that is far more befitting of Franco than a democracy.

Now, I should say immediately that I am a smoker, like nearly a third of my fellow Spaniards, and I've never tried to quit. I know smoking isn't good for my health, but neither is walking in the polluted streets of Madrid or Barcelona, nor is living in a world where the United States refuses to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.

Many of my friends are smokers too; many are not. But we have always managed to come to terms by asking if anyone minds our smoking - without the government's intervention.

Of course, nonsmokers should not be subjected to secondhand smoke nor obliged to suffer its effects, and in this vein, limits should be placed on smokers in enclosed, common-use spaces. But the government's argument that it is seeking to improve public health is hypocritical. The Spanish Treasury takes in colossal revenues, direct and indirect, thanks to this pernicious habit. Every time the government needs to find a way to finance some exceptional expense, a new cigarette tax is levied. The implicit message to Spanish citizens is this: "Smoke! Smoke more - so we can balance our budget."

Indeed, to escape the taint of hypocrisy, Spain would have to match its new antismoking measures with an array of others fighting everything else in the world that is at all harmful. Nowhere have I ever heard, for example, that cars are obliged to carry, just above the driver's-side door, a warning, like those on cigarette boxes, that "Driving a car may cause death, grisly amputations, quadriplegia and involuntary manslaughter."

I have also never seen anyone lay blame on sunbathers who go to the beach and almost drown, or mountain climbers who get lost and fall off cliffs, and whose rescue incurs a tremendous expense and endangers the lives of others. Nobody is forcing anyone to swim in the ocean or climb mountains, just as nobody is forcing smokers to smoke, and yet the latter are regarded practically as criminals.

People should be allowed to make decisions about their health as they see fit, even if that means undermining it. To keep someone from smoking on the job, if he or she has a private office where smoking does not endanger or annoy anyone, is an unacceptable act of paternalism.

As far as bars and restaurants are concerned, the ban is thankfully not absolute: in the end - after tremendous protests and battles over the law, that is - in establishments of less than 1,100 square feet (spaces that are too small to be divided into smoking and nonsmoking areas), the owner can decide if the place will be smoke-free or not. This way each citizen can decide whether or not to enter - and I, for one, will not go to a restaurant where I can't smoke. So far, it seems that the majority of these smaller bars and restaurants will opt to allow their clients to blow as many smoke rings as they care to, for fear of losing them.

Most probably, the Spanish people, rather civically minded in general, will not have too much trouble complying with the law, basically because it is only partly abusive and irrational. But watch out: the government is also trying to lower alcohol consumption and, in an unprecedented move, to alter the country's traditional schedule. People in Spain continue to eat lunch around 2:30, and to dine around 10 in the evening; we go to bed late. Efforts to make us more like the rest of the world in that regard strike a blow at the very essence of Spanishness: should our schedules change, we'll be much more like France or Switzerland - and definitely more boring.

A totalitarian state is one that sticks its nose where it doesn't belong and attempts to intervene in every aspect of its citizens' private lives, and many governments today, whether left, right or center, have developed this practice of behaving like busybodies. The old notion that only dictatorships can be totalitarian seems terribly naïve nowadays. And that is the worst thing about this antismoking law and others of the same ilk: they unfortunately prove that totalitarianism is no longer incompatible with the democratic systems that once guaranteed our freedoms.

January 20, 2006
        Marlboro Smokers' Group Names Philip Morris in Suit
        By Melanie Warner

A group of long-term Marlboro smokers filed an unusual lawsuit yesterday against Philip Morris USA, seeking to require the company to pay for medical tests to detect early-stage lung cancer.

While most tobacco-related lawsuits have sought billions of dollars in punitive damages, this suit, filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, asks that Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes and a unit of Altria, be required to pay for low-dose CT scan tests, a new method for identifying potentially cancerous lesions in the lungs.

The suit, which seeks class-action status, would include smokers in New York State who are 50 or over, have been smoking at least a pack of Marlboros a day for 20 years and have not been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Jerome H. Block, a lawyer at Levy Philips & Konigsberg in New York who filed the suit, said it was intended to save lives by getting smokers tested early.

"Hopefully, this suit will change things so that we will be dealing with lung cancers that are caught when they can be treated," Mr. Block said. "Today, most detection happens when cancer is already advanced."

Mr. Block said he did not have a specific number of people who could be included in the suit, but he estimated that it could be in the tens of thousands.

Two previous attempts to hold cigarette companies liable for medical monitoring have failed. A Louisiana jury in 2003 and a West Virginia jury in 2004 rejected plaintiffs' requests for medical monitoring, including low-dose CT scans.

Since those cases were decided, Mr. Block said, the use of low-dose CT scans for lung cancer detection has become more established.

The tests, which can be done on existing CAT scan machines using radiation doses that are 70 percent less than standard levels, do not conclusively detect lung cancer. Patients who test positive for lesions could undergo a PET (positron emission tomography) scan or a biopsy. If those procedures, which are typically covered by insurance, indicate the presence of cancer, a patient would then likely undergo surgery.

Robert Smith, director of Cancer Screening at the American Cancer Society, said that the CT scan was very effective in the early detection of lung cancer and that a major trial was under way to determine how effective it might be in reducing deaths from lung cancer.

Dr. Steven Markowitz, a professor for environmental sciences and director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, said that most lung cancer was detected only after patients started to experience an intense shortness of breath or coughed up blood.

"At that point their doctor will do a chest X-ray and see a mass that's quite large," said Dr. Markowitz, who has been using low-dose CT scans to detect cancers in nuclear energy workers for the Energy Department.

According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer, once detected, kills 85 percent of those afflicted within five years.

The lawsuit seeks to have Philip Morris pay for low-dose CT scans by proving that the design of Marlboro cigarettes was defective and could be made safer. Mr. Block said the case would use the testimony of former Philip Morris employees given during other tobacco cases, including the continuing Justice Department suit. New York law requires that manufacturers make products that are reasonably safe.

He said he wanted Philip Morris to set up a fund to pay for annual tests, which cost about $500 each, because most insurance plans do not cover them.

Philip Morris said it had no comment because it had not seen the complaint.

The latest suit comes amid a brightening litigation picture for Philip Morris. In December, the Supreme Court of Illinois threw out a $10 billion judgment in a class-action suit that had accused the company of deceiving smokers by marketing its "light" cigarettes as having lower levels of tar and nicotine.

The decision averted what would have been a major financial blow to Philip Morris and gave investors reason to believe that the company's litigation problems were starting to ease.

The company is still awaiting a decision from the Florida Supreme Court in the long-running class-action suit. In 2003, an appeals court overturned a record $145 billion damage award; the Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether that rejection was appropriate.
 
 
 
 
 

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November 16, 2006
        CIG COPS STUB OUT BUTTLEGGERS
        By Dan Mangan

A cigarette tax-evasion operation that cost the state tens of millions of dollars in revenue went up in smoke yesterday when authorities busted the owner of a Long Island Indian reservation tobacco shop who allegedly helped flood New York City's stores with truckloads of illegal and counterfeit butts.

The scheme's alleged "Big Chief" - Unkechaug Indian Nation member Ronald Bell of Mastic Beach, L.I. - is also being investigated for conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the tax-evasion enterprise.

Authorities seized about $750,000 in cash, 15 vehicles, including several Mercedes, three handguns, a shotgun and 41,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes yesterday morning. They arrested Bell, 40, his 38-year-old wife Yvette Mitchner and six other people on felony tax charges.

One defendant, Kee Hodck Cheow, 44, allegedly tried to hide $100,000 in cash in a washing machine in the backyard of his Brooklyn home when cops came knocking.

Bell is the proprietor of The Outpost, one of several tobacco shops on the 52-acre Poospatuck Indian Reservation in Mastic.

Because the reservation is sovereign territory, Bell is not obligated to collect taxes on the cigarettes he sells at his shop, said Detective Sgt. Patrick Ryder of the Nassau County Police Department's asset-forfeiture unit.

However, Bell is obligated to collect those taxes on cigarettes he sells off the reservation, Ryder said. But for $18 million worth of cigarettes he bought wholesale and then sold to distributors last year, Bell did not collect taxes, netting him about $2 million in pure profit, according to Ryder.

He also sold distributors cartons of counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes manufactured in China, complete with counterfeit tax stamps, said Paul Rossi of the state Department of Taxation and Finance.

"You can call him the Marlboro Man," quipped Rossi.

October 20, 2006
        MIKE WANTS TO PUFF UP CIG TAX BY 50¢
        By Frankie Edozien

Another cigarette tax could be on the way, the Bloomberg administration announced yesterday.

Sarah Perl, the Health Department's assistant commissioner, said the city would ask state lawmakers for the authority to hike the tax by 50 cents next year.

"We invite the council to join us in our advocacy," she said in testimony to the City Council's Health Committee.

In 2002, the city increased the excise taxes on cigarettes to $1.50 a pack. With prices now hovering at $7 a pack, the city has the nation's fourth highest tax on cigarettes.

Perl made the announcement during a hearing in which the council was considering increasing the legal age to buy smokes from 18 to 19 or 21.

And lawmakers were also considering a ban on candy-flavored cigarettes. The administration does not favor either move.

"Sending the message that 'smoking is an adult choice' may paradoxically play into the hands of the tobacco industry and attract more kids to tobacco," Perl said, adding that there was no data to support those bans.

Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens), who said he scarcely believed the testimony came from the Health Department, claimed, "I'm flabbergasted by the reluctance to even consider 19."

"That seems like a silly argument to me," added Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) of Perl's view that projecting a forbidden-fruit image on cigarettes would attract more kids to smoke.

"We should say to our teenagers, you shouldn't be able to buy cigarettes."

September 8, 2006
        CIG-BANNING DR. BLOOMY FANS THE FUMES OF HYPOCRISY
        By Steve Dunleavy

MAYOR Bloomberg is too smart a man to miss the irony he brought on his shoulders this week.

Let's go back to Dec. 30, 2002, when Bloomberg said of the bar-smoking ban, "We will save literally tens of thousands of lives."

He was talking about secondhand smoke in bars and restaurants and said we would all be healthier, if not wealthier, after the city curtailed it.

So smoking became the first legal product sold in New York that was partly banned in the city, based on Bloomberg's medical expertise, or access to pristine statistics about the effects of secondhand smoke in bars.

Some bars have lost from 10 to 30 percent of their business from Bloomberg's genius as a medical doctor - not to mention places that have gone out of business and lost the city tax money.

In fact, there has been absolutely no scientific, completely scientific study that links secondhand smoke to cancer. The city has never come up with one credible statistic.

But there has been a complete scientific study - from Mount Sinai research that shows that at least 70 percent of the thousands who labored at Ground Zero as first responders reported, and proved, that they had awful trouble breathing or worse.

Some are dead.

Bloomberg thinks these highly respected doctors are so crazy that they're barbecuing with the leprechauns.

"I don't believe that you can say specifically a particular problem came from this particular effect. There is no way to tell for sure and you've got to be very careful . . . If I say, 'I've got something because of this,' that's not just the way it works," said Dr. Bloomberg.

So now I have it perfectly clear: You ban smoking in bars with no statistics on secondhand smoke, but you are telling Mount Sinai, one of the best facilities in the world, they don't know their ear from their elbow when it comes to poison attacking the lungs like a spear.

Mayor Bloomberg, stick to politics and being a genius businessman, but you are as much of a medical expert as Dr. Kildare.

August 10, 2006
        Cough Up Web Cig Taxes: City
        By Stephanie Gaskell

If you ordered cigarettes from Dirtcheapcigs.com, expect to find a bill from the city for unpaid taxes in your mailbox soon.

The Finance Department is mailing out bills to more than 16,000 people telling them to pay cigarette sales taxes -- or face fines of up to $200 a carton.

The city hopes to collect up to $7 million in unpaid taxes from sales to the Kentucky-based company, which is no longer in business, as part of a settlement from a 2003 lawsuit.

"There's no such thing as a tax-free cigarette," warned Finance Commissioner Martha Stark.

The city has also billed 12,012 customers of Esmokes.com for $4,484,010 in unpaid taxes; 2,313 customers of Affordablecigs.com for $956,340; 136 customers of Cigoutlet.com for $120,845; and 1,221 customers of Smokesforless.com for $277,695.

July 25, 2006
        CIG BAN NO BAR BURDEN
        BIZ UP DESPITE LAW
        By Carl Campanile

New York's once-controversial smoking ban has become widely accepted - without hurting the bar and restaurant industry, a comprehensive new state health study has found.

Many bar owners and restaurateurs had warned the prohibitions in the city and across the state would dramatically hurt their bottom lines - or even put them out of business.

Those predictions never materialized, according to the analysis conducted by the state Department of Health.

"New York's Clean Indoor Act has not had an adverse financial impact on bars and restaurants," the report said.

The study analyzed state sales tax data from 1999 through 2005 - or two years after both New York City and New York state's smoking bans went into effect in 2003. The data found sales tax revenues held steady, and even inched up.

"The CIAA had no apparent effect on sales tax receipts for bars or full-service restaurants or on totals from all retailers in New York City or New York state," the report concluded.

If anything, opinion surveys showed that the ban could help bars and restaurants because more nonsmokers said they would patronize them.

Industry leaders did not dispute the report's finding that the gloom and doom talk was all smoke.

"We've learned to live with the law," said Chuck Hunt of the New York Restaurant Association, the group that advocates for bars, restaurants and clubs. "There was a considerable impact initially, especially for the bar and nightclub establishments. The customers gradually came back."

Hunt also said some members reported getting new nonsmoking customers.

The report found that 93 percent of "hospitality venues" were abiding by the law.

Nearly all restaurants and bowling centers - 99 percent and 98 percent, respectively - complied. But many bars are still defying the ban, with only 84 percent being smoke-free.

"Compliance in bars consistently lagged behind compliance in restaurants and bowling facilities," health officials said.

The study - the most extensive conducted by the state - also for the first time looked at how the ban affected the health of nonsmokers. It reported a dramatic 50 percent decline in nonsmokers being exposed to toxic second-hand smoke a year after the ban went.

"This may be the first time ever that research has shown a decline in the public's exposure to second-hand smoke following the implementation of a state anti-smoking law," said state Health Commissioner Antonia Novello.

Meanwhile, 80 percent of the public supports the smoking restrictions.

(NYC C.L.A.S.H. Note:  The following was our letter to the editor criticizing the validity and timing of this "study"):
 

The NYS Department of Health is hardly a neutral party when it comes to their beloved smoking ban. Yet their latest study (Cig Ban No Bar Burden, July 25th) on the effect it's had on compliance and business is greeted without an ounce of skepticism or investigation.  Bells should go off when the source has a special interest in keeping up support by "proving" success for the very policy they were proponents of.  Anyone critically reviewing their "new" study would find that there's nothing new about it.  What they did is repackage a NYS DOH 2005 annual evaluation of their Tobacco Control Program (1) and then employ one of its recommended "effective strategy"!  (2) That is, to mold public perception by keeping such things in the news.  By any means necessary I guess, even recycling the old and calling it new.  It also relies on the old adage that if you repeat lies long and loud enough they will become the accepted truth. Even worse, this study is based on old "observational" (by them!) data from 2004 (3) and is being peddled as if it represents how things stand today!  About the only honest claim is the sales tax revenue period that was analyzed by the Tax Dept.  But that too was already reported last year and, aside from the Tax Dept. admitting then that sales tax revenue dropped or remained relatively flat statewide, it was roundly criticized as skewed by the hospitality industry (4).  Also, aggregate figures are a convenient way to ignore the number of individual bars that lost business or had to close completely due to the ban (5). When it comes to the smoking ban, trust nothing the DOH says or does.

Audrey Silk
Founder, NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment (C.L.A.S.H.)
 

(1) "Second Annual Independent Evaluation of New York's Tobacco Control Program", August 2005
http://www.health.state.ny.us/prevention/tobacco_control/docs/2005-09_independent_evalutation.pdf
And reported by NY Times on August 7, 2005, "Two Smoke-Free Years"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/opinion/nyregionopinions/CI_smoking.1.html

(2) Pg. 95 of "Second Annual Independent Evaluation of New York's Tobacco Control Program"

(3) PDF Pgs. 11 and 12 (including Chart 3-1) of "The Health and Economic Impact of New York's Clean Indoor Air Act (CIAA)", July 2006
http://www.health.state.ny.us/prevention/tobacco_control/docs/ciaa_impact_report.pdf

(4) "Night Life Rises From Ashes of Smoking Ban", NY Post, by Kenneth Lovett, May 2, 2005
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/43420.htm

(5) "Ban Loss"
http://www.smokersclubinc.com/banloss3.htm
 

Mayor Bloomberg and his prying-eyes health czar, Thomas Frieden, aren't the only city officials determined to see that New Yorkers live healthy lives - or else.

Consider City Councilman Joel Rivera (D-Bronx) - who knows better than you how you should live your life.

Or so he thinks.

Poor people in particular, in his view, are in need of his wisdom - because they're not only fat, they're stupid.

According to Rivera, many poor people are fat because they eat fast food. And they do this, he thinks, because they don't know any better.

Happily for them, Rivera does.

Rivera would use municipal zoning powers to keep new fast-food shops out of obesity hot-spots all around the city, and away from schools.

Just how he would keep track of the relevant data isn't clear - though likely he would employ the same computers Bloomberg's Frieden is using, to keep close track of New Yorkers personal health records (for their own good, don't you know).

"It's one of the best ways to tackle the obesity issue," Rivera told The Post - notably overlooking education, diet, exercise and self-control.

Rivera's right that many people die from obesity.

Then again, everyone dies eventually.

Even skinny vegetarians.

Rivera and people like him don't care about postponing death so much as they care about controlling life.

Other people's lives.

But the way people live should be their decision, not Joel Rivera's.

Meanwhile, a recent (unscientific) NY1 poll found that more than 80 percent of respondents disagreed with Rivera's busy-bodying.

They understand that the proposal is just another effort by petty tyrants to dominate others - this time in the guise of an "innocuous" health campaign.

Its future was revealed recently in a Keystone Forum report: "Away-From-Home Foods: Opportunities for Preventing Weight Gain and Obesity."

The "study" recommends that restaurants be prohibited from offering "doggy bags."

It also asks Congress to somehow force restaurants to list calorie contents and serve smaller portions. (Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services endorsed its findings.)

Meanwhile, the Naderite Center for Science in the Public Interest - a nanny-state pioneer - has asked Congress to mandate warning labels on caffeinated beverages. Its director has said, "We could envision taxes on butter, potato chips, whole milk, cheeses and meat."

These are the kind of ideas that get the health commissars lurking in the City Council and mayor's office salivating.

Because such notions potentially give them additional control over the lives of New Yorkers.

Nanny knows best.

Right?

June 22, 2006
        MAKE THAT FAST FOOD 'TO GO': COUNCIL BIG
        By Carl Campanile and Mathew Charles

Call it the "McZoning Law."

A powerful city council member yesterday proposed overhauling the city's zoning rules to limit the number of fast-food restaurants in neighborhoods where obesity is epidemic among youths.

The fat-busting plan also would bar McDonald's, Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts and the like from locating near schools, said council Health Committee Chairman Joel Rivera (D-Bronx).

Rivera dropped the frying-plan bombshell during a council hearing on obesity.

"We have to be as strong with obesity as with the cigarette campaign. More people die from obesity-related issues than smoking cigarettes," said Rivera.

"We're looking at the zoning resolution to limit the number of fast-food restaurants," he added.

Rivera asked city Assistant Health Commissioner Lynn Silver, testifying before his committee, what she thought of his idea.

She said restrictive zoning seemed to be a "perfect example" of how government could help curb the fat epidemic.

Rivera said obesity is a supersized problem in a city where 21 percent of kindergarten students are already fat and 53 percent of adults are overweight.

"It's one of the best ways to tackle the obesity issue," Rivera told The Post. "In low-income areas, you find more fast-food restaurants. In more affluent areas, you find more mom-and-pop restaurants."

He said he will also look at encouraging more healthy alternatives - like farmers' markets - to open in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Rivera, who hasn't revealed the details of his plan yet, said he plans to draft legislation and hold public hearings soon on the meaty issue.

In one of the city's fast-food meccas - 125th Street in East Harlem - on-the-go eaters were divided on the issue.

"Trying to hide a donut won't work. People will find it," said Gary Londis, a Yonkers teacher.

He said teaching kids to exercise and eat better would be more practical.

A McDonald's manager, who requested his name not be published, said it was wrong to pick on fast food. "You have to include other factors like childhood exercise," he said.

Other critics blasted the idea as anti-business and big government run amok.

"This is what you call the 'Nanny State' at its absolute worst," said Mike Long, head of the state Conservative Party.

"These businesses create jobs and generate taxes," he pointed out.

June 19, 2006
        EATERY'S UNLUCKY STRIKES
        RISKS CIG SHUTDOWN
        By Carl Campanile

It's two more strikes (of a match) and you're out - for the first bar shut down for repeatedly violating the city's smoking ban.

Byzantio, in Astoria, Queens, was cited twice in the past two months and each time closed down for a week or less.

If inspectors catch patrons lighting up again, it would mean a monthlong closing - and a fourth offense could lead to its license going up in smoke.

"If establishments are violating the law, we will close them down," said city Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden.

The smoking ban - a top priority of Mayor Bloomberg's - has been in effect since 2003.

"Compliance with the Smokefree Air Act is at 99 percent. It is unfortunate that there are still a few restaurants that are not complying, but they are a minority," said Health Department spokesman Andrew Tucker.

"Our goal is for all workplaces to comply with the laws and protect workers."

Department inspectors spotted smokers puffing away at Byzantio on Tuesday, April 25, and its permit was revoked until the end of the week. Byzantio got nailed for flouting the law again on May 30 after customers were seen smoking, and ashtrays were distributed around the cafe. This time, it was shut down for seven days.

"If we observe smoking again, the next closure will be for 30 days, and then we will seek permanent permit revocation," the department said in a statement.

On 31st Street in the heart of Astoria, Byzantio is a sleek cafe and bar that caters to Greek-Americans and other locals. It features pulsating Greek and American pop music.

It was one of the establishments The Post highlighted last month as one of the worst offenders of the smoking ban.

Byzantio, with its survival threatened, is now urging its customers to smoke outdoors.

During a recent Post visit, no one was seen lighting up inside the bar. In fact, there weren't many patrons because the recent closures may have scared away customers and damaged business.

"We were closed down for too many violations for allowing smoking," one employee confided. "When you get closed down you get a bad reputation."

Aside from smoking, misinformation may have spread that the business is dirty and has vermin, which is not the case, an employee insisted. And that misimpression could be the kiss of death in Astoria, where there are numerous European-style cafes vying for customers. Byzantio's manager declined comment.

Health officials said Byzantio had been given numerous opportunities to stop blowing smoke at the ban before its suspensions.

June 18, 2006
        MIKE'S UGLY RX
        By Columnist Adam Brodsky

MAYOR Bloomberg may have been joshing last weekend when he hinted of a possible bid for president.

By Friday, he was again denying it - though he says he sends articles on the idea to his mom.

But for those who enjoy parlor games, here's a question: Suppose Bloomberg does run - and wins. What exactly would a Michael Bloomberg presidency look like?

The answer?

Think: Big Government.

Actually, Huge, Obscenely Intrusive Government.

For all Bloomberg's efforts to appear above partisan politics, the guy is simply a No-Bureaucracy-Is-Too-Big liberal.

Always was.

Always will be.

Mike can claim he switched from Democrat to Republican when he first ran for mayor because, after all, "There's no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage."

He can pretend he's an independent; if he does go for the gold in '08, he may well run as one. "Neither political party is blameless" in letting "ideology . . . trump science in public-health decision-making," Bloomberg said in Atlanta last week.

But don't buy it.

Bloomberg can seem non-partisan only because his context is leftist New York. Anywhere else, his government-knows-best elitism would be seen for what it is: left-wing nanny-state radicalism.

Hizzoner couldn't have proved that point better than in his Atlanta talk. His premise, in essence, was that all health issues are public-health issues - that is, matters for government to deal with.

If you stuff your face with cake and pizza and then tip the scales at 300 pounds, setting you up for obesity-related diseases, that's government's problem.

If moving your thumb on the TV's remote is your only exercise, obviously government is not doing its job.

Using tobacco? The bureaucracy needs to act.

Unsafe sex? Let's not even go there.

Most folks would agree that communicable diseases are a legitimate public-policy concern. But President Bloomberg wouldn't be satisfied with that.

"Chronic and non-communicable diseases have now replaced communicable diseases as our society's most pervasive killers," he said. Which to him, of course, signals a new imperative for government intervention.

But something will always be the leading cause of death; that doesn't make it government's responsibility. Arguably, the fact that contagious diseases have grown relatively less worrisome suggests that government's role should shrink - not expand.

No matter. Hizzoner has often said that the public always wants more government services. And he certainly aims to provide them.

Nor does he care much about what's lost in the tradeoffs: whether it's social approbation, economic benefits or the simple euphoria of a few scoops of New York Super Fudge Chunk.

"These new threats result from, and are aggravated by, our forbearance, and even social and economic encouragement, of such behavior as tobacco addiction, unhealthy nutrition and excessively sedentary lifestyles."

At bottom, he believes we're all fools. "All these deadly menaces result from our choices, both as individuals and as a society, to ignore or encourage life-threatening risks."

Which is why, one supposes, he doesn't think that educational programs are enough.

"Public-information campaigns are insufficient," he said. "In the realm of public health, law really does the work."

Bloomberg means to force people, in other words, not just to wear seat belts, but to stop drinking, monitor their health, get on the treadmill.

He's right about one thing: Such thinking can't quite be characterized as liberal or conservative - because it contains elements of both the wacky, New Age left and the authoritarianism often linked to the right.

In any case, it's radical. (It certainly makes you wonder about Democrats who freak out when the feds want to look at anonymous phone records to protect Americans from terror but who don't say boo about being battered into giving up vices, in an attempt to protect them from disease.)

And it's not just the loss of personal choices that's problematic. Or the fact that Bloomberg-style bureaucrats, who claim to base their planning on scientific findings, really have little handle on the medical and economic issues involved.

On top of all this, it's fair to wonder whether such pervasive paternalism will usher in a new kind of dependency - where folks accustomed to being taken care of by Uncle Sam become incapable of taking care of themselves.

Far-fetched? Perhaps.

But it would be a dream come true for President Bloomberg.

May 12, 2006
        PACKS & SPEND POLICY
        CIG TAX-HIKE BID
        By Kenneth Lovett

ALBANY - New legislation to hike the city's cigarette tax by 50 cents has been quietly introduced on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg in a bid to discourage more people from smoking, The Post has learned.

The bill, now in the Democratic-led state Assembly, would authorize the city to increase the $1.50 cigarette to $2 a pack. Approval would bring the average cost per pack in the city up to $7 or $7.50.

"The mayor urges the earliest possible favorable consideration of this proposal by the Legislature," city chief Albany lobbyist Anthony "Skip" Piscitelli wrote in a memo in support of the bill.

Assembly Finance Committee Chairman Herman "Denny" Farrell's staff estimates that the increase would mean an additional $35 million for the city and $30 million for the state.

While Farrell, who is also chairman of the state Democratic Party, said he introduced the legislation for the mayor, he stressed that he did not necessarily support it.

Farrell said he traditionally introduces tax bills put forward by the city, regardless of his views on them.

"They've been given no commitment, but you never say never," Farrell told The Post.

In his memo of support, Piscitelli cites the potential health benefits of a cigarette-tax increase. He says that after the city hiked the then-8-cents-per-pack tax on cigarettes to $1.50 in 2002, the smoking rate fell 11 percent among adults from 2002 to 2003 and an additional 4 percent in 2004.

"The additional 50-cent increase now being proposed will continue to serve as a disincentive for cigarette consumption and, therefore, lead to a decrease in the long-term health costs associated with smoking-related illness and disease," Piscitelli wrote.

But opponents argue that tax-free cigarette sales on Indian reservations, as well as cigarette bootlegging, would dramatically increase as a result of a tax increase.

"A tyrant doesn't know when he's beaten," sighed Audrey Silk, co-founder of NYC CLASH, a pro-smokers organization, when told of the new bill.

Bloomberg first raised the possibility of another cigarette-tax hike earlier this year while addressing a joint legislative budget committee in Albany.

Gov. Pataki had proposed raising the state excise tax on cigarettes as well. In the end, the Legislature rejected both requests in its final budget, with Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno saying he was not in favor of any new tax increases this year.

Any bump in the excise tax would be in addition to existing sales tax.

May 9, 2006
        MIKE: KICK-ASH COPS ON CASE
        By Stephanie Gaskell

Bar owners who illegally allow smoking should follow the rules, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

After The Post reported that patrons in many Astoria bars were lighting up, Hizzoner said health inspectors were on the case.

"The rules apply to everybody," he warned.

A Post investigation found that Astoria establishments are the worst offenders. One bar has racked up 11 violations.

"The rules are you can't smoke where there are employees," Bloomberg said. "If you don't have any employees in your bar and they're all volunteers, you can smoke. It's very simple."

May 8, 2006
        CIG-BAN SCOFFLAWS LIGHT UP ASH-TORIA
        By Carl Campanile

Establishments in Queens - particularly the nightspots of Astoria - are the biggest violators blowing smoke at the city's 3-year-old smoking ban, The Post has learned.

Over the past year, the city Health Department issued 601 violations citywide to "smoke-easies" for permitting smoking during spot inspections, data show.

Of that total, 232 were issued to businesses in Queens, compared to 158 in Manhattan, 126 in Brooklyn, 73 in The Bronx and 12 in Staten Island.

The Bloomberg administration said the crackdown is working because in the previous year, inspectors issued 1,000 violations to smoke havens citywide.

That means the illicit smoking plummeted 40 percent.

"Compliance with smoke-free workplace laws was high to begin with, and it has increased to more than 99 percent," said Health Department spokesman Andrew Tucker.

But not in Astoria.

Incredibly, nine of the city's 12 worst violators were watering holes and eateries in Astoria that cater to smoke-happy Greek, Slavic and other European ethnics and Middle Easterners.

Penalties range from $200 for a first offense to a maximum of $2,000 and possible license revocation for repeat offenders. But a Post probe found the violations had not stopped the Astoria bars from letting patrons puff.

At two Astoria bars just blocks apart on Broadway, which serve mainly to Croatian immigrants, even the barmaids puffed away.

Health inspectors slapped Cafe Scorpio with a total of 11 violations - tops in the city - during separate inspections. Seven infractions were for failing to inform patrons not to smoke and four were for providing ashtrays.

Cafe Scorpio was a smokers' paradise during a Post visit last week, with 13 of the 15 people present smoking. The sleek, dimly lit bar was lined up with packs of cigarettes and cigarette lighters. People also smoked at lounge tables or while playing billiards, watching ballgames or viewing the Croatian news channel.

Defying the smoking ban was so accepted that the barmaid even lit up behind the bar - despite two signs conspicuously posted above the cash register that read "No Smoking" and "Smoke Free."

Scorpio also handed out small juice bottles - for smokers to deposit their ashes.

When a reporter walked in, two young boys were playing at the pool table. Smokers were all around them.

Scorpio manager Denis Lisica put up his hands in disgust when confronted by The Post and insisted he's in a no-win situation.

"My clientele are all smokers. It's a European crowd," said Lisica, during an interview in which a patron handed him a pack of cigarettes.

Lisica said the controversy will continue - unless the city either allows certain bars to become legal smoking establishments or blitzes individual smokers with steep fines for breaking the law. Currently, the merchant pays the fines.

The smoking ban also was ignored two blocks away at Cafe Valentino, where inspectors previously issued seven violations.

"Do you need an ashtray?" the barmaid asked a Post reporter who stood at the bar.

Most people at the bar or sitting in lounge chairs smoked. Shortly thereafter, the barmaid lit up her own cigarette.

A Post reporter and photographer went to Valentino a second time, acting as a couple from out of town. Asked whether smoking was allowed, the bartender said yes and handed over a cup filled halfway with water for the ashes.

"Everyone's tired. They want to relax. It's Friday," a barmaid said the following day, after the Post reporter identified himself.

Middle Eastern establishments on Steinway Street known as "hookah" lounges - where people inhale sweet tobacco from tall, water-bubbling pipes - were also repeatedly hit with smoking fines. Leading the pack was the Egyptian Cafe with 10 violations, the second most in the city.

(Click here to view Bars/restaurants with most smoking violations graphic)

May 8, 2006
        TRIBES BLAST CIG-TAX SUIT
        By Selim Algar

New York Indian tribes are fuming over a renewed push by the state's convenience stores to end the tax-free sale of cigarettes on reservation land.

The New York Association of Convenience Stores filed a lawsuit against Gov. Pataki last week for failing to enforce a law that would require wholesalers to charge tax on tobacco products sold to Indian businesses.

"We would shut down," said Lance Gumbs, a smoke-shop owner and tribal councilman with the Shinnecock Indian nation of Southampton.  "If our cigarettes are taxed, people will have no incentive to come here, and will go to 7-Eleven."

May 3, 2006
        HOSP 'CIG SHELTER' FIRESTORM
        By Stephanie Gaskell

Elmhurst Hospital wants to build two specially designed, taxpayer-funded "smoking shelters," The Post has learned.

The city-funded Queens hospital sent out a request yesterday for bids to build the shelters.

But the proposal has many bar owners - who are still fuming over Mayor Bloomberg's smoking ban - up in arms.

"It's outrageously hypocritical," said Amy McCloskey, who owns Madame X in Manhattan.

"We can't smoke in bars, but the city wants to use taxpayer dollars to accommodate smokers at a public hospital?"

The two 8-by-12-foot smoking enclosures would be placed far from the hospital entrance, to encourage smokers to stop lighting up there while still protecting puffers from the rain.

But once the head of the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation got wind of the plan, he immediately put the brakes on it.

"This is not the way our tax dollars should be spent," HHC acting President Alan Aviles said.

April 28, 2006
        SMOKE 'OUT' AT RIKERS
        GUARDS FACE CIG BAN
        By David Seifman

Correction officers and others who work on Rikers Island would have to leave their cigarettes at the main entrance as part of a plan to contain the jail's black market in tobacco, officials said yesterday.

"That's one of the things being discussed," said Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, responding to a Post report that a single illegal cigarette is fetching as much as $20 in city jails.

Inmates haven't been allowed to smoke since the city imposed a ban in March 2003.

But correction officers and other workers still enjoy the privilege, creating what officials describe as a "corruption hazard."

Seabrook, a smoker himself, said he would vigorously oppose any effort to stop his members from lighting up.

But he readily agreed to a possible compromise requiring that tobacco products be checked at Rikers' front gate, where they'd be accessible to nicotine-dependent workers.

"I think it's a home run for everybody," said Seabrook. "It protects the smoker. It protects the nonsmoker. It protects the safety and security of the institution."

Correction Commissioner Martin Horn pledged to work with Seabrook and other union leaders to "do whatever it takes to keep the jails safe."

On Wednesday, the Department of Investigation announced the arrest of six city workers, including three correction officers, for allegedly smuggling drugs and tobacco into Rikers.

Typically, the corrupt officers collect their payoffs from inmates' girlfriends or associates outside the jails, authorities said.

One correction officer told The Post that resourceful inmates have been known to sneak in discarded butts after trips to court.

"They take the tobacco, pull out a sheet of toilet paper and make a cigarette," explained the officer.

Asked where they'd get a light, he responded, "You take a pencil, stick it into the light [fixture] and you have a light quicker than with a match."

The officer confirmed Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn's report that illegal smokes are going for $10 to $20 apiece.

In fact, he said, the rate can hit $40 in "the brig," the solitary-confinement unit.

April 27, 2006
        HOLY SMOKE! $20 PER JAIL CIG
        RIKERS GUARDS NAILED IN BLACK-MARKET SMUGGLING
        By David Seifman

The smoking ban imposed in city jails three years ago has made cigarette smuggling so lucrative that a single smoke can command up to $20 from nicotine-starved inmates - leading to concerns about corruption behind bars, officials reported yesterday.

News of the thriving sky-high black market came as the Department of Investigation announced arrests in separate cases of three correction officers, two cooks and a nurse's aide on charges of taking bribes of $50 to $1,000 to sneak tobacco, cocaine and a cellphone onto Rikers Island over the past year.

Two of the suspects - Correction Officer Glenda Glenn and nurse's aide Cleveland Porter - were the first to face criminal charges for cigarette smuggling since the new rules were enacted in March 2003.

"When the ban went into effect in 2003, that created a market and an opportunity for people who were going to want to continue to smoke in the fa- cility and it has created a corruption hazard and a bit of a black market," said Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.

She said a single cigarette could fetch $10 to $20.

A bag a loose tobacco that stores sell for $2 might bring $40 to $50 in the illegal Rikers Island market.

While cigarettes are considered contraband for prisoners, they're perfectly legal for correction officers and others who work in the jail system. But perhaps not for long.

"In light of these charges, [Correction] Commissioner [Martin] Horn and Commissioner Hearn are going to examine to what extent they will allow employees to carry personal amounts of tobacco," said Deputy Correction Commissioner Richard White.

That brought an angry response from Peter Meringelo, president of the Correction Captains Association, who warned in 2003 that the smoking ban would cause major headaches.

He said he would vigorously fight any attempt to block correction personnel from smoking.

"If that's their vice in life, they should be allowed to enjoy it," Meringelo said. "They work a very tough job."

Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, said he would also fight any attempt to restrict smoking by his members.

"I would have a major problem with that," he said. "Nicotine is proven to be addictive."

Like Meringelo, Seabrook described smoking as a way for correction officers to wind down from their tense jobs.

Glenn and Porter face up to seven years if convicted of a variety of charges, including bribe receiving.

The other four suspects were all accused of smuggling or agreeing to smuggle fake cocaine provided by undercover agents posing as inmates' girlfriends or by cooperating inmates.

They face sentences that could range up to life imprisonment.

In July 2003, DOI arrested seven city employees, including two correction officers, for smuggling drugs into jails. All pleaded guilty and were sentenced to terms ranging from 45 days to six years.

April 18, 2006
        MORE PUFFERS HEEDING BLOOMY'S SMOKE CIG-NALS
        By Carl Campanile

Complaints of illegal smoking in city bars, restaurants and other public places have plummeted 23 percent in the last year, The Post has learned.

The city Health Department received 2,283 complaints about defiant smokers puffing in forbidden indoor venues from July 1, 2005 through March 31, 2006.

The city received 2,959 complaints about violations of the smoking ban during the same time period the previous year.

The Bloomberg administration attributed the decrease to better compliance and a drop in the number of smokers since the Smoke Free Air Act was approved in 2002.

The tough ban - which drew anger from smokers and civil libertarians across the city - went into effect in March 2003.

"I mean it's not 100 percent compliance, but damn close to it," Bloomberg recently said on his WABC radio show.

City health officials said there are 200,000 fewer smokers than there were four years ago.

New Jersey followed last weekend when it imposed its own smoking ban.

Health officials in the Garden State said yesterday everything went smoothly- in part because residents there were already conditioned to smoke-free rules in neighboring New York and Delaware.

March 21, 2006
        THE INDIAN EXEMPTION
        Editorial

Gristedes makes a good point in a lawsuit it filed yesterday, nudging Albany to make vendors on Indian reservations pay cigarette taxes: Giving the Indians a free ride on the taxes is not only unfair to other retailers - it's also illegal.
Foolish policy, too.

"We're losing a lot of business, and so are a lot of small businesses," says John Catsimatidis, Gristedes' chairman.

In the suit, filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, the supermarket chain says permitting the reservation sales of untaxed cigarettes, even to non-Indians, has created "a thriving black market" for smokes.

Gristedes is looking for more than $60 million in damages from two Indian tribes in Long Island, the Unkechaug and Shinnecock nations.

You can't blame the company for suing.

After all, if it has to pay the taxes, then why shouldn't its competition - the stores and Internet retailers on Indian reservations - also pay?

In fact, state law says they do have to pony up.

But Gov. Pataki decided to ignore that law, telling Indian shopowners they needn't bother.

Pataki & Co. say they're trying to work out a plan "that makes sense."

Meanwhile, honest retailers are losing millions of dollars in sales.

No one should be surprised, of course, that smokers look to pay as little as possible - and thus flock to Indian shops and Web sites that can charge less because they don't pay taxes. The Senaca tribe, for example, sells cartons of Marlboro for about $30 apiece, while the going rate in Gotham is around $70.

Skirting tobacco levies has been a well-established practice in New York ever since the city and state first imposed them in the late '30s.

Officials like Mayor Bloomberg claim that such taxes lead to less smoking. But data from the Centers for Disease Control suggest otherwise.

Even Mayor Mike, in crediting cigarette-tax hikes with lower rates of smoking among kids, admitted that lighting up also fell before the hikes took effect.

So why credit the tax with a drop?

In fact, the notion that many folks will give up cigarettes when you raise the tax is deeply flawed, because smokers can simply flout the levy - buying from other states, the Internet, criminal "buttleggers" or exempt Indian tribes.

All of which makes taxing tobacco (at $3 a pack in the city) a godsend for organized crime.

"In New York, it is literally more profitable to hijack a cigarette delivery truck than an armored truck," one official quipped back in 1989 - when taxes were far less onerous.

Meanwhile, retailers who obey the law and pass along taxes to their customers are penalized - losing millions in sales.

Pataki has no right to discriminate in favor of the tribes - even if he fears riots like those seen when the state tried to collect taxes on reservations in the '90s.

If Albany won't make tribes pay, it shouldn't make anyone else pay, either. Which raises a better idea for leveling the playing field: Just scrap the tax altogether.

March 8, 2006
        CITY SMOKING OUT TAX EVADERS
        By Stephanie Gaskell

If you've ever bought cigarettes online from a company called eSmokes, Uncle Sam wants you.

As part of a bankruptcy settlement, the Virginia-based company agreed to hand over thousands of names of New Yorkers who bought cigarettes from them from 2000 to mid-2003.

City officials said the information, which also includes the dates and quantities of the sales, could net up to $33 million.

"When you buy cigarettes over the Internet, you have to pay New York City and New York state taxes, regardless of what any Web seller advertises," Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday. He said the city should do everything it can to enforce the cigarette tax law.

"We have an obligation to level the playing field for retailers who play by the rules and collect taxes that support vital services for all New Yorkers," he said.

Bloomberg urged any New Yorker who bought cigarettes online without paying taxes to call 311.

The city has already collected nearly $1 million in back taxes from New Yorkers who have voluntarily come forward.

February 12, 2006
        BLOOMBERG BEGS FOR MORE CRIME
        Editorial

Mayor Bloomberg's recently announced budget includes jacking up the city's tax on cigarettes another 50 cents.

Says Mike: "There's a clear correlation . . . You raise your cigarette taxes, fewer children go and smoke."

Actually, according to the Centers for Disease Control, New Yorkers' smoking habits mirror national trends; tax hikes have no evident effect. But that's beside the point.

The mayor really should deal with certainties — one of them being that organized crime would make a killing.

New York's history with cigarette taxes is a long, sordid and embarrassing tale, as documented in an insightful study by Patrick Fleenor.

The city's first tax on smokes came in 1938 and was, like all new taxes, "temporary." Politicians assumed the penny-per-pack levy would be innocuous.

The reverse was true: Cigarette bootlegging, crime associated with bootlegging and "border-shopping" (buying smokes from outside New York) immediately became problems.

When the state levied a tax in 1939, the problems grew.

In 1964, after the U.S. Surgeon General issued the famously damning report on the health effects of smoking, New York lawmakers jumped at the opportunity, doubling the tax from 5 cents to 10.

"From that very moment, bootlegging became a major problem," says Roy Goodman, the city's finance administrator at the time.

When mobsters forced amateurs out of the burgeoning buttlegging trade, Goodman called cigarette smuggling the "principal stoking facility of the engine of organized crime."

Eventually, the threat of hijacked trucks made shipping cigarettes so dangerous that trucking companies had to form convoys, and the costly security measures put some firms out of business.

In response, the city and state devoted more resources to combat bootlegging and expanded relevant police powers.

Nonetheless, in 1965 the anti-bootlegging campaign turned up a total of only 70,000 cartons of illegal cigarettes.

And bootlegging got much worse when, in 1968, the state tax jumped yet another 2 cents.

In 1970, the city's stepped-up enforcement netted a stunningly slim 1,000 cartons of contraband cigarettes. This, though the State Department of Taxation said that more than 112,000 illegal cartons were entering the state every day.

In 1972, the state tax rose to 15 cents per pack. Buttlegging boomed — and taxed sales fell.

A study for then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller linked a host of crimes to buttlegging — including "attempted murder, torture, kidnapping and armed robbery" — and concluded that efforts to enforce taxes were "completely ineffective and a failure."

The report recommended a total repeal of the city's smoking tax.

It never happened.

In 1976, the state's Special Task Force on Cigarette Bootlegging and the Cigarette Tax again recommended abolishing the tax, citing an uptick in lethal crime associated with it.

Now fast forward to 2001.

State taxes rose to $1.11 a pack, and Gov. Pataki was forced to dedicate yet more tax dollars to battling buttleggers.

He also signed into law a ban on cigarette sales on the Internet, which had been crippling local sales. (A federal court later struck down the Web-sales ban as unconstitutional.)

In 2002, Mayor Bloomberg jacked up the tax from 8 cents to $1.50. Combined with a state tax that also grew to $1.50, New Yorkers now faced a tax bill of $3 per pack. It was a bootlegger's dream come true.

And, sure enough, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has reported a surge in regional tobacco thefts, with spillover effects in nearby states.

Since 2003, a violent wave of "cigarette wars" has hit town, leading to no less than three deaths. In one such killing, a black-market smokes dealer was killed for underselling a competitor.

Says John Dugan, an area supervisor for the ATF: "When it comes to smuggling and counterfeit [cigarette] stamps, traditional organized crime is involved, terrorist groups are involved and street gangs are involved."

Indeed, cops found counterfeit cigarette-tax stamps in the apartments used by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a group that later merged with al Qaeda.

Suspected members of an al Qaeda sleeper cell in Buffalo, the "Lackawanna Six," are said to have been involved in the trade, as have captured Hezbollah agents in North Carolina.

No surprise there: The city's sky-high cig taxes have turned packs into gold.

If it's raised another 50 cents, as Mayor Mike wants, a case of 60 cartons will have a retail price of nearly $5,000.

This makes legal tobacco retailers a prized target for criminals. As one official at the Department of Taxation and Finance Tax Enforcement Office quipped, "In New York it is literally more profitable to hijack a cigarette delivery truck than an armored truck."

Alongside jumps in illegal activity related to avoiding cigarette taxes, sales of taxed cigarettes in New York have fallen every time the state and city have increased levies.

Which doesn't mean the hikes get New Yorkers to smoke less, but rather that they buy more cigarettes illegally or across state lines — and that legitimate retailers take a hit.

Money that would go to New York grocers instead goes to North Carolina and other low-taxed locales.

And consider this: Because everyone is avoiding the tax, revenues — so dear to lawmakers — don't even rise very much (if at all) from the hikes. In fact, quite the opposite: In 1994, when Canada cut its mindless $5-a-pack tax in half, revenues actually rose.

Mayor Bloomberg's compassion is heartening, but it's folly for him to think himself capable of altering human nature through taxation.

Slashing butt taxes — and thus freeing up tax dollars now spent to vainly enforce a levy that brings in comparatively little revenue — would strike a blow to New York's underworld.

Call us old-fashioned, but we still believe that instilling kids with good habits is the job of their parents; a mayor's job is to go after organized crime and terrorists.

If Bloomberg believes otherwise, he should at least be honest about it.

February 5, 2006
        NAILING CIG-TAX CHEATS
        By David Seifman and Heather Gilmore

The city has come up with a new 10 Most Wanted list — serial cigarette scofflaws who will have to cough up upwards of $40,000 for buying bushels of butts online.

The smokers likely thought they were being savvy by ordering hundreds of cartons of smokes from Web sites and not paying tax on the orders, the city said.

But the end result is they've puffed the most expensive cigarettes on earth, with the city billing them $1.50 per pack for unpaid taxes, with an added penalty of $100 per carton.

The city Finance Department is hunting down 194 Most Wanted Smokers who, the agency said, failed to respond to two written requests over the past year to settle up. The Post exclusively obtained the top 10 list. Eight of the worst offenders owe heart attack-inducing penalties of more than $20,000.

No. 1 on the list, Thomas Faernstrom, is accused of buying 377 untaxed cartons since July 2002, when the city's tax on cigarettes soared. He's been billed $43,355, representing $5,655 in taxes and $37,700 in penalties.

A man who answered the door at Faernstrom's most recent listed address in Bensonhurst said the alleged butt hoarder didn't live there, and a phone number at his current listed address in Richmond, Va., is disconnected. Others on the list have also proved elusive. The city said two on the list of 194 have died.

The Post successfully tracked down one of the alleged Top-10 scofflaws in Florida. The former New Yorker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was not happy about the city's crackdown. "It's ridiculous. They're such a--holes. I haven't got anything in the mail here," he said. "The bastards. I got those cigarettes legally from an Indian reservation over a period of years; this is just revenue-raising."

February 4, 2006
        A BUTT-TAX INDIAN GIVER
        By John Catsimatidis
        John A. Catsimatidis is CEO Of Red Apple Group, which operates 45 Gristede's supermarkets in New York City
        and more than 200 convenience stores and gas stations upstate.

PROPOSALS by Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg to increase New York's cigarette taxes, already among the nation's highest, will slam the small businesses that collect them — unless the state finally enforces its rights to collect cigarette taxes from American Indian reservations.

Right now, an estimated $400 million in tax revenue escapes through this gaping loophole every year.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that New York could collect sales taxes from the reservations on cigarettes sold to non-Indians — and the Legislature long ago passed laws to enable collection. Yet the state still declines to actually collect the taxes.

Yes, the state has been cracking down on untaxed cigarette sales over the Internet — and made big steps by getting most major credit-card companies to not honor transactions at Indian reservation retailers and by persauding two major shipping firms to not handle reservations' deliveries.

But that's not enough. Just this week, a reservation on Long Island placed an ad in a city newspaper soliciting cigarette orders by mail or phone, with payments accepted in personal checks or money orders, and delivery by U.S. mail. Advertised prices per carton amounted to about half of what the cigarettes would cost at stores off the reservation.

A carton of cigarettes in New York now runs at least $47.62, including $15 in state excise tax, outside the city — and at least $64.30, including $30 of state and city excise taxes, in the five boroughs. The governor wants to hike the state tax to $25 — while offseting the city tax to amount to no net increase in New York City proper. But Mayor Bloomberg is eyeing a city tax increase of $5 per carton.

On the reservations off-brand cigarettes run as low as $20 a carton and regular brands as low as $25 — because they're all sold tax-free.

If taxes are increased again, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind where even more New York consumers are going to purchase their cigarettes.

It's not just lost tax revenue. Non-reservation retailers lose income when their customers opt to buy from the reservations. Eventually, this leads to loss of jobs, which upstate especially are already scarce.

I don't argue with the sovereignty rights of the reservations. Nor do I question the state's right to set taxes and direct non-reservation retailers to collect them, or to enforce such policies as checking ID to make sure consumers are of legal age to buy cigarettes. But the playing field must be level.

Gov. Pataki twice has set a date to begin collecting the taxes from the reservations. Yet apparently the collection date has been moved yet again, to March of 2007 — after Pataki (conveniently for him) has left office.

Enough is enough. It is time to show respect for the law and equalize the obligations on all cigarette retailers in New York, both on and off the reservations. Unless that happens, any increase in taxes unfairly will hurt the law-abiding businesses that collect them.

February 3, 2006
        WEB BUYERS $MOKED OUT
        By David Seifman

Price-conscious smokers who thought they landed fantastic bargains on the Internet have been hit by the city with bills totaling nearly $1.4 million, officials said yesterday.

A crackdown on tax-free cigarette sales on the Web hauled in $695,479 from 2,156 puffers out of the $1,354,880 demanded in the first round of bills sent out to 3,780 New York City residents through May.

A second round in August took in another $169,990 out of $507,000 due.

Now, officials say, they're ready to get really serious and impose a $100-a-carton penalty — plus the $1.50-a-pack tax.

"We want voluntary compliance," said Finance Department spokesman Sam Miller. "Now that we've sent out three notices, it's not so voluntary anymore."

February 3, 2006
        EVEN SMOKERS BACK CIG TAX
        By David Seifman

A big majority of New Yorkers — and many smokers — support Mayor Bloomberg's proposed 50-cent hike in the cig tax, which would make the average price $8 a pack.

A Quinnipiac University poll found 71 percent supported the tax, including 36 percent of smokers, a sign they're desperate for any excuse to quit.

The poll also confirmed that fewer New Yorkers are smoking. Only 17 percent said they had smoked in the past week, compared with 23 percent in April 2001.

[NYC C.L.A.S.H. Note:  Why wouldn't the three quarters of the non-smoking population not support a tax they wouldn't have to pay and that would take any tax target off their backs?  They don't think about the question on the basis of principles -- the response is purely economics-driven.  It's those 36% of self-hating, weak, government-dependent to help them live their lives that are the problem.  They drag the rest down to their pathetic level of inviting the government in to make personal decisions for you]

January 30, 2006
        PROMISES, UP IN SMOKE
        Editorial

Poof. A promise from Mayor Bloomberg just went up in smoke.

Expanding on one of his campaign's themes, Mayor Bloomberg said just days before the election, "If we focus on trying to do a little more with less, with the expansion of the economy, we will get through [next] year without any tax increases or fee increase."

Of course, only 48 hours after being re-elected, Mayor Mike was pledging to reinstate a commuters tax. (Fortunately, however, that plan appears to have been tossed into the dustbin of bad ideas.)

But Bloomy's back at it: Last week in Albany he was seeking to raise the city's levy on cigarettes even higher.

"I think another 50 cents might be good," he said. "Nobody likes taxes . . . but cigarette taxes are different."

Actually, they're not. A tax is a tax.

Just because a tax's targets are society's villains du jour — smokers, double-parkers (even legal parkers, according to some reports) — doesn't justify disproportionately increasing their share of financing the government. Profiting off the vices of others is a vice in itself.

It's no secret that Mayor Mike, an ex-smoker, is a born-again health fanatic. But this is getting ridiculous. Hizzoner's already hiked the city cigarette tax a full 1,875 percent!

This addiction to cigarette-tax dollars is seriously unhealthy.

Isn't it time to kick the habit?

January 25, 2006
        POLS JOIN A$H FRAY
        By Kenneth Lovett

ALBANY — Mayor Bloomberg's call for another cigarette tax hike was met with support yesterday from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver but avoidance from Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Silver said he "probably could" support the proposed 50-cent city excise-tax increase.. But he expressed concern the move could promote more illegal cigarette imports.

Bruno, an avid anti-smoker on record against any tax increases in this year's budget, dodged comment on the proposal.

"All of this is going to be part of the budget in terms of revenue needs, health-care needs and Medicaid needs, so I won't be addressing people's comments in isolation," Bruno said.

January 24, 2006
        A PAIN IN THE BUTTS
        By Kenneth Lovett

ALBANY — Smokers, beware.

Mayor Bloomberg is ready to give you another butt-kicking by hiking the city tax on cigarettes.

Bloomberg told reporters yesterday he would like to boost