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What's In The News

2007

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December 5, 2007
Much of Suit Aimed at Indian Cigarette Sales Is Dismissed
By Corey Kilgannon

A federal judge has dismissed all but one charge in a lawsuit, filed last year by a supermarket mogul who hopes to be the next mayor of New York City, that challenged two Long Island Indian tribes over their longstanding practice of selling tax-free cigarettes from reservation smoke shops.

John A. Catsimatidis, whose holdings include the Gristedes supermarket chain, claimed in the suit that the two tribes illegally undercut his business, and he sought to force Indian retailers to buy cigarettes from wholesalers at the taxed price. He also asked for $20 million from the two tribes’ cigarette retailers, the amount he claims he has lost.

Leaders from the tribes, the Shinnecock and Unkechaug Indian nations, responded by moving to have the claims dismissed.

In a decision rendered on Friday and announced yesterday, Judge Carol Bagley Amon of Federal District Court in Brooklyn dismissed the claim that the non-tax sales “created, fostered and nourished a thriving black market in illegally discounted cigarette sales” and also dismissed charges of corrupt business dealings and unfair competition.

Harry Wallace, chief of the Unkechaug nation and a lawyer who owns a smoke shop on a reservation in Mastic, said yesterday that his tribe was pleased with the ruling.

But Judge Amon did not dismiss the entire suit, finding that advertisements calling the cigarettes tax-free were misleading because cigarette sales are not actually tax-free under state law, and that they were “likely to mislead the consumer into believing that he or she need not pay taxes on purchased cigarettes.”

Mr. Catsimatidis said he would persevere with the suit. “Everyone has to pay their taxes, and Indians must charge tax on cigarettes when they sell to non-Indians,” he said.

The state sets minimum price levels for retailers and imposes a sales tax of $1.50 a pack. But historically, the 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.

October 19, 2007
Many Smokers Avoid Cigarette Tax, Report Finds
By Sewell Chan

New York City loses more than $40 million in revenue each year from the people who avoid paying cigarette taxes, according to a report [pdf] released today by the city’s Independent Budget Office.

In 2002, the state and city each raised its cigarette tax to $1.50 per pack, for a total tax of $3 per pack in the five boroughs. Experts have credited the higher tax with helping to reduce smoking citywide; the city’s smoking rate dropped to 19.2 percent from 21.5 percent in the year following the tax increase.

But the higher taxes also increase New Yorkers’ incentives to buy cigarettes from lower-tax areas, including Indian reservations, and from Web sites that claim to sell “tax-free” cigarettes — even though, with few exceptions, “no cigarettes available to New Yorkers are legally free from taxation by the city and state,” the report says.

Unsurprisingly, surveys have shown that most New York smokers buy their cigarettes from convenience and grocery stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and discount stores. But a sizable proportion — about 27 percent of New York City smokers — sometimes or always buy their cigarettes from “undertaxed” sources, including out-of-state retailers, duty-free stores, mail-order companies that take orders over the phone and Internet and unlicensed vendors who sell bootlegged or counterfeit cigarettes on the street. Some smokers even drive all the way to the South, where cigarette taxes are particularly low, to buy their cigarettes.

The 2002 increase in the city tax to $1.50 from 8 cents lifted the city’s revenues from the cigarette tax to almost $160 million from less than $30 million — even after accounting for the fact that 46 percent of city cigarette tax revenue is redirected to the state.

That’s the good news. But the budget office — using a formula that considered annual cigarette consumption by city residents and the potential revenue from those cigarettes — calculated that in 2006, the city should have collected $167 million in cigarette taxes and instead took in a little more than $123 million. The budget estimate estimated that $43 million in city cigarette taxes went uncollected last year.

In February of this year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg again proposed raising the city’s cigarette tax. “While the mayor’s proposal to again increase the local cigarette tax assumes that higher prices will further discourage New Yorkers from smoking, it may also encourage more city smokers to seek under-taxed cigarettes,” the report concludes.

September 18, 2007
Cigarettes Are Costly, but Often Less So in Chinatown
By Angelica Medaglia

All over Chinatown, cigarette butts dot the sidewalks: blue, white and brown ends labeled with names like Seven Wolves in Chinese, Shuanxshi and Yes in English. But the most common name is Marlboro.

The stubs are tangible evidence of the ready supply of illegal cigarettes in Chinatown, available at sidewalk stalls and variety stores, where they typically sell for $4 a pack — as much as $3.50 less than those sold legally. They include Chinese brands and knockoffs of popular American brands smuggled into the United States, all untaxed.

Under the Manhattan Bridge, a popular shopping place for many immigrants from Fujian Province, there are illegal cigarettes for sale amid the shopping stalls, the private bus operators, the makeshift employment agencies and the booths where international calling cards are sold. Cautious vendors sell cigarettes mostly to customers they already know: people who speak Fujianese, people who work in restaurants, people waiting for buses to take them to jobs in Washington or Richmond, Va.

Neither the merchants who sell them nor the people who buy them are willing to speak publicly about the black market. But several smokers who said they had smoked counterfeit Marlboros or Chinese brands said that they bought them because they were cheap; some said they thought they were buying legitimate brands at bargain prices.

The smuggling and sale of illicit Chinese cigarettes has long been a challenge for law enforcement agencies in New York. And it appears to be growing, but reliable statistics on the volume of the trade are not available.

“It is a problem,” said Joseph Green, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives. “Eight years ago, say, there were only 100 investigations, and now we have several hundred” in New York State.

In a raid at a warehouse in Corona, Queens, in August, federal and local authorities found 600,000 cartons of cigarettes, many marked “made in China”; 125,000 counterfeit tax stamps from Kentucky, Virginia and New York; and $350,000 in cash.

In April, the police seized 243,000 cartons of counterfeit Marlboros and Newports from China as they were being unloaded from a van into a self-storage facility in College Point, Queens.

Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company — whose Marlboro brand is one of the most popular among bootleggers — helps law enforcement officers distinguish between genuine brands and counterfeit ones by checking obvious and more subtle features in the packaging.

Counterfeiting is so prevalent that the British American Tobacco company, the world’s second largest publicly traded tobacco group, estimates the total loss of sales incurred by tobacco companies at roughly $4 billion per year.

And some tobacco companies have started researching electronic chips and other technology that would help customs authorities at airports sort the legitimate brands from the fake.

So far this year, the police, in precincts throughout the city, have received about 240 complaints about contraband cigarettes from cigarette retailers and customers. Other numbers tell a similar story about the prevalence of illicit cigarettes. A survey conducted in 2006 by the state’s Department of Health found that nearly half of the smokers interviewed in New York City said that they had bought illegal cigarettes within the year.

The black market in cigarettes in New York is run largely by Chinese and Russian groups, according to Mr. Green, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives.

Yet, though Chinatown offers a large market for contraband cigarettes, smoking rates among Asians are lower than for any other racial or ethnic group in New York, according to the city’s health department. Beyond the legal issues, there are health concerns. Contraband cigarettes have been shown in studies to contain higher levels of toxic metals, like lead, than legitimate brands do.

In Chinatown, Louisa Lam works with people trying to kick their smoking habits at Gouverneur Healthcare Services and hears reasons that keep the market thriving.

There was a high school student who said he bought counterfeit Marlboros because he did not want to ask his mother, a home health aide, for the money for real ones.

And there are some older people, suffering from smoking-related illnesses, who buy Chinese brands in the belief that they have less nicotine than the American ones.

“Most of them will tell you it is not as strong,” Ms. Lam said of the flavor of the Chinese brands. “But nobody really knows what’s in the cigarettes.”

About a year and a half ago, Hunter College began a smoking-cessation program intended especially for Chinese restaurant workers, but the program has had few takers. Recruiters visited about 500 restaurants in Chinatown, Queens and Brooklyn, but only about 65 smokers signed up for nine sessions of telephone counseling and a $90 reward.

One restaurant worker, Toiyan Auyeung, who lives in Pittsburgh and was in New York recently awaiting a bus to Maryland for a restaurant job, said, through an interpreter, that he did not want to buy illegal cigarettes and that he relied on a friend to buy him real Marlboros in Chinatown. “I can’t figure out,” he said, “which ones are real and which are fake.”

August 15, 2007
A Call to Ban Smoking in Cars (With Children)
By Sewell Chan

Under a City Council proposal, New York City would prohibit smoking in cars where children are riding, joining the ranks of Arkansas, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Bangor, Me., and Rockland County, N.Y., where similar legislation has been passed.

The proposal, which Councilman James F. Gennaro, a Queens Democrat, plans to formally announce on Thursday, would prohibit smoking in cars where a child under 18 is present. Fines would range from $200 to $2,000, depending on the number of violations. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who pushed through a ban on indoor smoking in 2003, and his administration have not said whether they will support the proposal.

Mr. Gennaro, in an interview, noted research that shows that children inhale and are harmed by second-hand smoke even when the windows in a car are open. “It is my belief that people’s right to privacy doesn’t extend to force-feeding their children cigarettes within the confines of the car,” he said.

In 2006, Arkansas became the first state in the country to ban smoking in cars with children present. The law applies to children who are under age 6 and weigh less than 60 pounds, who were already required to wear a safety seat. The Louisiana ban, also enacted in 2006, applies to children 12 and younger. The Puerto Rican law, which took effect this year, applies to children 13 and younger.
In January, as Pam Belluck of The Times reported, the City Council in Bangor, Maine’s third largest city, approved a ban on smoking in any motor vehicle where anyone under 18 is a passenger. The smoker can be fined $50.

The County Legislature in Rockland County passed a similar bill in May, as Peter Applebome has reported.

In New York City, Mr. Gennaro’s bill will probably be taken up by the City Council next Wednesday, although it could take months for hearings and votes to be held. Mr. Gennaro last year proposed raising the minimum age for buying cigarettes to 19, from 18, but the Bloomberg administration did not support the measure and it did not pass.

Kathleen Dachille, an assistant professor who directs the Legal Resource Center for Tobacco Regulation, Litigation and Advocacy at the University of Maryland School of Law, said in a phone interview that courts have generally looked favorably on banning smoking where children are concerned. For example, states have banned smoking in homes where foster children — who are under the state’s care and protection — live. Some family judges have made smoking cessation a precondition of child custody as well.

Professor Dachille said she was unaware of legal challenges to laws banning smoking in cars with children, but added, “I think the public health community and tobacco control community are treading in some dangerous waters, because people’s zone of privacy is important.”

Mr. Gennaro’s smoking proposal has been the subject of reports in The New York Post and The New York Sun. The Sun quoted Mr. Bloomberg as saying this year, in response to the Rockland County bill, “If it’s a child in the car, who doesn’t have the ability to speak up and protect themselves, then society does start to have an interest.” According to The Sun, the mayor added, “We do have a responsibility to provide a health environment for our children and I would just urge anybody, if you have children at home, don’t smoke at home, don’t smoke in your car with your child; you really are damaging your child’s health.”

July 26, 2007
Bowing to Pressure, Disney Bans Smoking in Its Branded Movies
By Brooks Barnes

The Walt Disney Company said it would ban cigarettes in its family films and discourage it in others, a pioneering but largely symbolic move that comes as pressure mounts on Hollywood to kick its smoking habit.

The company’s decision to prohibit smoking in Disney-branded films breaks ground in Hollywood, even if there was not much tobacco use depicted in its filmed entertainment to begin with. Until now, the other big studios have chosen to pressure filmmakers behind the scenes, or include antismoking public service announcements before films that depict tobacco use.

“This is good for the perception of Disney, but the primary reason is that cigarette smoking is a hazard and we should avoid depicting it in movies and on television,” said Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, in an interview.

Disney’s action comes amid increasing pressure from advocacy groups and regulators for media companies to purge movies of cigarettes. In May, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that portrayals of smoking would be considered alongside sex and violence in assessing the suitability of movies for young viewers. Films that appear to glamorize smoking will risk a more restrictive rating.

Mr. Iger said in a letter to Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, dated July 25 that Disney would also “discourage depictions of cigarette smoking” in pictures released by its Touchstone and Miramax units. Last month, Mr. Markey, chairman of the subcommittee on telecommunications, held hearings on the effects of movie images on children.

Mr. Iger also pledged to work with theater owners to encourage antismoking public service announcements, or P.S.A.’s. However, Mr. Iger added in the letter, “Cigarette smoking is a unique problem and this P.S.A. effort is not a precedent for any other issue.”

According to the American Legacy Foundation, 90 percent of all films depict smoking, with three-quarters of movies rated G, PG or PG-13 featuring tobacco use.

Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association, an industry group, said “any effort to address tobacco’s influence on kids in this country is welcome.”

July 14, 2007
Panel Accord on Increasing Cigarette Tax
By Robert Pear

WASHINGTON — Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee reached agreement Friday on a bipartisan plan calling for a big increase in the cigarette tax to pay for a $35 billion expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next five years.

The agreement, probably to be approved next week by the committee, sets the stage for a confrontation with President Bush, who proposed a much smaller increase, $5 billion over five years. House Democrats favor a much larger increase, $50 billion over five years..

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said, “This plan will get coverage to three million more low-income children — more than a third of the kids who are uninsured today.”

Under the proposal, the federal excise tax on cigarettes would be abruptly increased by 61 cents a pack, to $1 a pack. The plan calls for proportional increases for other tobacco products.

Renewal of the children’s insurance program, which is set to expire on Sept. 30, is the most important health care issue facing Congress this year, lawmakers of both parties say.

Debate on the program provides a foretaste of a much larger struggle over the future of the nation’s health care system, as Mr. Bush and Democrats argue about the proper role of government and private insurance.

The Senate plan was negotiated by Mr. Baucus and Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee; John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia; and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.

Mr. Grassley said the agreement would refocus the program on low-income children. It would reduce payments to the states for coverage of children with family incomes exceeding three times the poverty level. (The poverty level is $20,650 for a family of four.)

Under current law, the federal government provides $5 billion a year to states for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covered 7.4 million people at some time in the last year. The bipartisan Senate plan would add $35 billion, bringing the five-year total to $60 billion. House Democrats, by adding $50 billion to the current level of spending, would increase the total to $75 billion.

Mr. Bush, by contrast, has proposed an increase of $5 billion and has denounced the Democratic proposals as a step toward “government-run health care” for all.

For several weeks, the White House has been predicting a showdown with Congress over the program, which was created in 1997 with broad bipartisan support to insure children in families who have too much income to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance.

Under the Senate agreement, states could use information from food stamps and other assistance programs to locate and enroll youngsters eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. States could also use the child health program to cover the costs of prenatal care for pregnant women.

But federal officials could not grant additional waivers to the states for coverage of adults. About 670,000 adults were covered last year as a result of such waivers, some of which were granted or renewed by the Bush administration.

Earlier this week, before seeing details of the Senate plan, some White House officials were hinting at the possibility of a veto.

In a joint statement, Senators Grassley and Hatch said such threats were “disappointing, even a little unbelievable.”

Mr. Grassley said the Republicans had done a good job by limiting the increase in spending to $35 billion. The 2008 budget resolution — a blueprint for spending approved by both houses of Congress — allowed an increase up to $50 billion, he noted.

Supporters of a higher cigarette tax said it would discourage smoking, particularly among young people. But economists say the tax is highly regressive and falls more heavily on lower-income people, among whom smoking is more prevalent.

June 22, 2007
City Smokers’ Ranks Drop 19%, Study Says
By Anthony Ramirez

The city’s department of health, citing a combination of high taxes, workplace limits and $10 million in grim television advertising, said yesterday that the number of smokers in New York City had declined by 240,000 in the last five years.

That change represents the sharpest drop since the city began keeping records in 1993, and one of the steepest declines in the nation since 1965, when the surgeon general first warned Americans about the dangers of smoking.

“When we look at the U.S. data overall, from 1965 to the present, this is faster than the United States as a whole in any period,” said Jennifer Ellis, the city health official who helped direct the study.

City researchers, writing in a widely followed publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the share of the city’s residents who smoked had dropped by 19 percent during the period of the study.

They said that in 2002, about 1,305,000 city residents smoked, or about 21.6 percent of the adult population, and that in 2006, about 1,065,000 residents, or 17.5 percent, smoked. The study was based on interviews with 10,000 city residents and used the same measures that the C.D.C. uses. The sharpest drops were in the Bronx, where smoking dropped from 25.2 percent of the population to 19 percent, and in Manhattan, where the rate dropped from 21.2 percent to 16.1 percent. Staten Island was flat, at 27.3 percent in 2002 and 27.2 percent in 2006.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said in a telephone interview, “The big picture is that if you are willing to do the right thing and take political risks as Mayor Bloomberg did” with curbs on smoking in public places, “you can get enormous health benefits.”

Moreover, Dr. Frieden said, the administration will continue to press for higher cigarette taxes of 50 cents more per pack. Adjusted for inflation, he said, a pack is actually 60 cents cheaper now than when taxes were last raised in 2002.

At that time, New York City increased the excise tax on cigarettes from 8 cents to $1.50 per pack. New York State also raised its excise tax from $1.11 to $1.50. Both resulted in the highest combined city/state tax in the United States at the time.

The tax increases raised the average price of a pack from $5.20 to $6.85. The city’s revenue from cigarette taxes has declined to $120 million this year from $123 million in 2005.

Councilman Tony Avella, Democrat of Queens, who has clashed with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg about smoking curbs in restaurants, said he would oppose higher taxes.

“People who smoke are addicted,” he said. “All you succeed in doing is making addicts pay more in taxes.”

Dr. Frieden said the city would continue to buy television advertising. “The tobacco industry is spending at least $400 million in New York City alone for marketing and promotion,” he said. Even if the city and state spent $20 million annually, he said, “We would still be outspent 20 to 1.”

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company, declined to comment.

The health department researchers, writing in the most recent issue of the C.D.C.’s morbidity and mortality report, said the rapid drop in smoking in the city represented a continuation and an acceleration of long-term trends.

The drop, they said, represents as many as 80,000 fewer premature deaths from cancer and other smoking-related diseases, if the smokers quit the habit permanently.

The researchers attributed the most recent drop in the smoking rate to the 2006 television campaign highlighting the physical ravages of smoking.

The commercials ran on broadcast and cable channels. The researchers said that the typical New York viewer would see the city’s antismoking ads, called “Nothing Will Ever Be The Same,” as many as 110 times over the course of a year.

Moreover, the researchers said that separate research suggested that 9 of 10 city smokers had seen the ads.

[See analysis in more detail at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5624a4.htm]

June 8, 2007
New Jersey Senate Panel Supports Penalty for Smoking in Cars With Children Aboard
By Ronald Smothers

TRENTON — Smoking in New Jersey has been banned from the workplace, public buildings, bars, restaurants and even large swaths of the casino floors in Atlantic City. The next frontier is the family car with children aboard.

Under a measure passed unanimously Thursday by the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, anyone caught smoking while a passenger 16 years old or younger is in the vehicle would be charged with a disorderly offense punishable by a $100 fine.

“There is no more important law enforcement responsibility than protecting children,” said State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a Democrat of Union County who sponsored the measure. “And there is no worse thing you can do to children’s health than to have them closed up in a car where someone is smoking.”

The measure would make smoking with a child in the car a primary violation of the state’s traffic codes, allowing police officers to stop such drivers and give them tickets.

If approved by the full Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jon S. Corzine, the measure would make New Jersey the third state — after Arkansas and Louisiana — to impose such a ban. In Arkansas, however, the ban applies to those driving with children 6 and younger, and in Louisiana, 13 and younger.

In New Jersey, only one town, Keyport, in Monmouth County has a ban, which was approved in April.

Even as legislators approved the measure, which most said was likely to be enacted, they expressed some ambivalence. Senator Barbara Buono, a Democrat from Edison, who ultimately approved the ban, wondered aloud, “I don’t know if this is the best way to deal with parental behavior.”

Antismoking activists in New Jersey and nationally applauded the bill as a recognition of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, which has driven much of the legislation aimed at banning smoking in most public places and many private ones as well.

Regina Carson, president of the New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution, known as GASP, said that this bill addresses the needs of infants and toddlers who cannot communicate their distress at smoke and teenagers afraid to confront their parents or other adults about their discomfort.

“This provides a consistent message about the dangers of second-hand smoke and smoking,” Ms. Carson said. “Children are taught in school, or by public service announcements, that smoking and secondhand smoke are bad for you.”

Dr. John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, a 40-year-old national anti-smoking group, said that quality-of-life measures, like smoking bans when children are present, were an outgrowth of recent moves to ban smoking by foster parents, caring for children who are ultimately a state responsibility.

“Six or eight months ago it would have been impossible to get such a bill through a state legislature,” Dr. Banzhaf said. “But the ban on foster parents has made it more likely.”

But Gary Nolan, the United States regional representative for the Smoker’s Club, an international group that seeks to assert private property rights in countering smoking bans, said he saw “big brother, big pharma” and no end to harmful social engineering behind such bills.

Mr. Nolan said that the concern about secondhand smoke was “junk science” that cited levels of harmful substances in smoke that did not reach levels recognized as dangerous by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Among drivers, reaction mirrored the ambivalence expressed by legislators.

Phil Volpe, a nonsmoker, who was seated at a Starbucks in Pennington with his 10-year-old daughter, Erin, said, “It is a little bit big brother, but the health and safety of a child is more important than big brother.”

And Erin, who said that she had just completed her school’s DARE course on the prevention of alcohol, tobacco and drug use, was firmly in favor of the ban as well.

“Smoking could distract someone, and they could miss a stop sign or something,” she said.

And there was a question of enforcement.

Sgt. Michael F. Cseremsak of the Hopewell Township Police Department questioned whether officers would enforce the law.

Using a hand-held cellphone, Sergeant Cseremsak noted, was a secondary traffic violation, meaning that officers could not stop drivers for that violation alone, but could cite them if they were stopped for some other infraction like speeding.

“Does this cause hazardous or careless driving?” said the officer, who said he occasionally smoked a cigar, though never at home or in a car. “I don’t think so. It’s really borderline, and I just wonder how far we are going to go regulating people’s lives.”

January 28, 2007
Unsafe at Any Level [CLASH Note: Warning- Misleading Headline]
By Op-Ed Contributor Michael Siegel, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Boston University

ACCORDING to a report released last week by the Harvard School of Public Health, cigarette companies have been steadily increasing the nicotine yield of their cigarettes — the report describes an average total increase of 11 percent from 1998 to 2005.

Anti-smoking groups have seized on the report as evidence that the Food and Drug Administration must begin regulating tobacco products.

A steady and significant increase in nicotine in cigarettes over the past eight years or so certainly seems worrisome. It sounds as though companies like Philip Morris, which makes Marlboros, are secretly and deceptively increasing the nicotine in their cigarettes and, apparently, lying about it (since they deny the assertions of the report), all in an effort to increase the addictive potential of their cigarettes and harm the public’s health.

There are, however, a number of problems here.

First, though I don’t dispute the report’s assertion that overall nicotine yields in cigarettes have increased, this does not appear to be the case for Marlboro, the leading cigarette brand that commands over 40 percent of the market.

Using the data on nicotine yields of Marlboro cigarettes provided by Philip Morris to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health for 1997 through 2006, I conducted my own analysis of the trends in Marlboro nicotine yields.

The average nicotine yield of 16 Marlboro brands consistently reported for the entire time period was 1.81 milligrams in 1997; in 2006, it was also 1.81 milligrams. Thus, the average nicotine yield of these cigarettes in 2006 was exactly the same as in 1997, nine years earlier.

Second, an increase in nicotine yields does not necessarily mean an increase in the harm to smokers. It is well documented that smokers compensate for changes in nicotine levels to get a relatively constant nicotine dose.

This is why “light” cigarettes are not safer products. The nicotine levels in each cigarette may be lower, but smokers simply smoke more of them, negating the potential benefits of reduced nicotine levels. Indeed, smoking many “light” cigarettes is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, because of the increased exposure to other pollutants in cigarettes, than smoking fewer “regular” cigarettes.

Similarly, if nicotine yields increase, smokers might be expected to compensate by smoking slightly less. This could actually have a marginally positive health benefit if it reduces overall cigarette consumption.

Third, tobacco companies are not necessarily doing anything wrong if they are, in fact, increasing nicotine yields. The paradox of “light” cigarettes demonstrates that reducing nicotine yields is actually the last thing we would want — it would, again, result only in people smoking more, and thus increasing tar delivery and the resulting carcinogenic health effects.

The nicotine in cigarettes is indeed a public health problem. But anti-smoking groups have drawn the wrong conclusion from the Harvard report: the problem isn’t whether or not nicotine levels are increasing; it’s that this deadly, addictive product is available in the first place.

For the past two years, public health groups — led by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids — have lobbied for passage of legislation that would grant the F.D.A. the authority to regulate tobacco products; shockingly, this bill, which Senator Edward Kennedy is preparing to re-introduce in the next few weeks, would expressly preclude the F.D.A. from simply removing nicotine from cigarettes.

It remains unclear why public health groups would support such a provision, though presumably it’s their attempt to appease Philip Morris, whose support is deemed necessary to get the proposed legislation through Congress.

It’s not enough to regulate the varying degrees of nicotine in cigarettes. Ultimately, there’s only one way to deal with the addictive effects of nicotine, especially on children: grant the F.D.A. the authority to get nicotine out of cigarettes altogether. Anti-smoking groups shouldn’t settle for anything less.

March 17, 2008
ADS TURN TV INTO AN 'EWW'TUBE
By Columnist Andrea Peyser

IT'S enough to make me take up smoking again.

You see the ads every morning on NY1, airing as regularly as a cigarette addict needs a fix.

The anti-tobacco ads put out by the city Health Department are as grotesque as open-heart surgery performed without anesthesia.

There's video of a beating, diseased heart. It's followed by an image of discolored lungs. There's a mouth eaten away by disease. And a throat with a purplish tumor growing from it.

I get it. Smoking is bad.

But this is sick.

For the last few months, Health Commissioner and chief nanny Dr. Thomas Frieden has ratcheted up an anti-smoking blitz to the point of nausea.

One morning, as one of the commercials came on, my gaze fell on the 9-year-old with whom I share my world. She tried to hide under the sofa.

I can explain to my kid why people simply should not smoke. But this campaign goes too far.

A check of parents assures me I'm not alone.

Anne Townsend, a Brooklyn mother, clicked on the tube to catch up on Spitzer.

As she watched, horrified, her girls, 3 and 7, mutely stared at the set, terrified.

"I had to explain to them that I think smoking is terrible," said Townsend. "And yet I don't want them to think that their friends are going to have these horrible things happen to them."

Beth, mother of kids, 4 and 8 years old, said, "I think it's horrifying!

"No one thinks everyone should go out and smoke, but the message is lost.

"To a child, it's the picture of a monster."

Sarah Perl, assistant commissioner of tobacco control, told me that since Feb. 25 the ads have logged just seven complaints, while hot-line calls from smokers who aim to quit have jumped 400 percent.

These ads are set to run through the end of the month.

A news broadcast would not post pictures of medical atrocities without warning. But these X-rated ads run without a rating.

The Health Department needs to toss them out with the Marlboro Man.

March 7, 2008
WHEEZER PLEASER: CIG-TAX HIKE NIXED
By Fredric U. Dicker

ALBANY - New York's smokers can exhale - now that Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has vowed to reject a call to double the state's $1.50-a- pack cigarette tax.

"I'm not supportive of it," Bruno (R-Rensselaer) said yesterday, just one day after he was quoted in The Buffalo News as opening the door to a cigarette-tax hike by saying, "I'm going to review that - and very diligently."

Bruno's comments came after a push for higher cigarette taxes by the Center for a Tobacco Free New York, a coalition of health-care groups.

The coalition's director, Russell Sciandra, said a $1.50-a-pack hike would raise $500 million for state coffers - and eventually cut the number of smokers in the state by as many as 1 million.

The state raised cigarette taxes to $1.50 a pack in 2002, on top of the $1.50-a-pack tax charged separately by New York City.

And the state and the city each imposed an additional sales tax on the total cost of the cigarettes.

March 3, 2008
        ADS BLOWING SMOKE
        DOUBT ON CIGS' LINK TO ILL KIDS
        By Bill Sanderson

Three sick children portrayed in City Hall's newest anti-cigarette ad may not be victims of tobacco smoke after all.

The footage of the children came from photo-agency archives, the Health Department said in a statement.

"The children pictured in this ad are real patients, suffering from conditions that have been clearly associated with exposure to secondhand smoke," the statement said.

"The children are not presented as individual victims of environmental tobacco smoke. We do not know their individual medical histories."

Paula Alex, CEO of the Advertising Educational Foundation, said, "That is not necessarily truthful advertising."

Jan Wicks, a University of Arkansas expert in advertising ethics, added, "I would have tried to find children who actually did have illnesses due to secondhand smoke."

The ad - the latest in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's two-year anti-smoking campaign - hit the air last week.

It shows a little girl having her ear checked, a boy wearing an oxygen mask, and another boy whose lungs are being ventilated.

"When you smoke around kids, you expose them to thousands of chemicals that trigger severe health problems like painful ear infections, crippling asthma, deadly pneumonia," says the voiceover.

Wicks said that government agencies have a special responsibility to be truthful in advertising, and that the ad probably should include a disclaimer explaining that secondhand smoke didn't sicken the children.

"It's in the best interests of government and the public to bend over backward to be accurate and clear in all communications," Wicks said.

Legally, the ad is probably in the clear since it doesn't specifically claim the anonymous children were sickened by cigarettes, said John Feldman, an advertising-law expert with the Reed Smith firm in Washington.

"I don't believe there is a representation being made . . . other than secondhand smoke can cause these conditions, or does cause these conditions," Feldman said.

There's little doubt about the science of the ad, drawn from a 2006 report by the US surgeon general that said secondhand smoke can cause children to suffer respiratory problems, ear infections and asthma.

The ad doesn't mention the most chilling finding - that tobacco smoke can cause sudden infant death syndrome.

Since the city began running its graphic anti-smoking ads in 2006, calls to the 311 help line by people seeking to quit have more than doubled, to 46,000 last year, said Sarah Perl, an assistant commissioner of health.

This year, the city plans to spend $10 million on the TV ad campaign. "The city is very committed to this approach," Perl said.

November 4, 2007
BOOTLEGGING BUTTS BOOSTS TERROR: POL
By Samuel Goldsmith

The widespread illegal sale of cigarettes in the United States is pouring millions of dollars into overseas terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, Rep. Anthony Weiner warned yesterday.

Weiner (D-Qns./B'klyn) said he will introduce new legislation this week to stop the growing trade, which sent $1.5 million to the two militant groups between 1996 to 2000 - arguing that the black market for cigarettes has become a national security issue.

"We must crack down on the illegal sale of tobacco, which gives terrorists and criminals the ability to raise more money," said Weiner.

Weiner's legislation would toughen the penalty for illegal cigarette sales from a misdemeanor to a felony, making it a federal offence. It would also ban the United States Postal Service from shipping tobacco products.

October 23, 2007
        SMOKE & MIRRORS
        BUTTS, LIES AND PUBLIC HEALTH
        Op-Ed by Jeff Stiers (associate director of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org))

THE days of deception on the health risks of cigarettes aren't over after all - although now the distortion's coming from the "good guys."

For decades, the industry-funded Tobacco Institute denied the harmful consequences of smoking and did a great disservice to public health. Today, however, it's anti-smoking advocates spreading the disinformation - overstating certain risks. But - because such deception undermines the credibility of all public-health work - they're being called on it by one of their own.

A startling study by Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University's School of Public Health is pointing the finger at the well-intentioned likes of Action on Smoking and Health, the politically powerful Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and New York City's Department of Health.

In a study published this week in the journal Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations, Siegel warns that these groups are wildly inflating the health risks of exposure to second-hand smoke. In doing so, they tarnish the very credibility that the public-health community must have in order to save lives.

Siegel is no friend of Big Tobacco - he's a vocal opponent of smoking and a supporter of smoke-free workplace rules. Indeed, it was his place as a leading member of the tobacco-control community that compelled him to publish his findings that some groups are harming the movement's credibility by overstating the dangers of short-term exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS).

There is evidence that long-term, high-dose ETS exposure increases the risk of heart disease and heart attack. And there is speculation that even short-term exposure may be unsafe to those with severe coronary artery disease. But the evidence does not support the claim that more than 100 groups are wantonly making - which is that acute, transient exposure to ETS increases heart-attack risk in healthy individuals.

The lack of evidence hasn't stopped Commissioner Thomas Frieden at the city Health Department, which is buying ads in The New York Times claiming that "just 30 minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke produces some of the same physical reactions that would occur from long-term smoking, and increases the risk of heart disease in non-smokers."

The "evidence" behind that assertion is so flimsy that it would be laughed at if it supported the finding that smoking is less dangerous than we once thought. The clear implication is that some anti-smoking activists have adopted an "ends justifies the means" approach in pursuit of their noble cause.

This is what makes Siegel's report so troubling. No longer can we rely on the public-health establishment for scientifically accurate information. They'll fudge the numbers if they have to, so long as it promotes their overall agenda - in this case, the drive to outlaw smoking in all public places.

Even more disturbing is that some in the tobacco-control community are attacking those raising questions. Siegel was banned from the primary tobacco listserv for simply sharing his dissenting views. And he's not the only one. UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom has been personally vilified for, in his words, "questioning the lethality of ETS, such as a claim in the 2006 Surgeon General's Report," which alleges that ETS kills about 50,000 Americans per year.

Science eventually catches up with those who hyperbolize about risks, and the public learns to disregard them. It would be tragic to see some public-health advocates lose the mantle of sound science and end up going the way of the old Tobacco Institute.

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and needs our urgent attention. Overstating the case may help the advocates win this political battle but at significant cost to the overall public-health war.

October 14, 2007
REALTY SMOKE ALARM
By Angela Montefinise

Where there's smoke, there's ire.

Apartment dwellers across the city are fuming over secondhand smoke seeping into their homes, sparking an increasingly popular movement to snuff out cigarettes in private dwellings.

Over the last few years, landlords and co-op boards at several buildings - including a 20-unit walkup at 341 W. 54th St. - have started rejecting smokers.

"We're a small, old building in Hell's Kitchen, and when one person smokes, everyone in the building smokes," said co-op president Deborah Constantine. "It's the kind of thing that imposes on everyone."

The demand for smoker-free buildings is increasing as "the body of evidence exposing secondhand smoke as a toxin is increasing," said Joanne Koldare, founder of New York Coalition for a Smoke-free City.

Russell Miller, managing director at realty firm City Habitats, estimated that "between 5 and 10 percent of buildings in the city are actively nonsmoking" - a far cry from five years ago, when the Lincoln Towers co-op tried to ban smoking, but had to back down after a bitter battle with tenants.

"It's an option that more people are looking for, even smokers who don't like to smoke in their apartments," Koldare said.

Koldare's coalition is launching a smoking prevention program in the next few weeks to educate landlords and tenant groups about ways they can legally go smoke-free.

"So many landlords, and even tenants, think that there's a constitutional right to smoke, or [that] smokers fall under a protected class," she said. "They don't. Landlords can make policies that say no smoking, the same as no pets."

"For nonsmokers, the smell of secondhand smoke is disgusting," said Cassandra Sweet, 40, who moved out of her Williamsburg apartment in April because of it.

"We kept the windows open, we had fans going," said Sweet, who has a 2-year-old son. "Nothing worked. It permeated every crack. It took over the entire apartment."

Last year, a precedent-setting New York civil-court decision said second-hand smoke can break the "warrantee of habitability," and residents can break their leases if landlords don't do enough to fix the problem.

Legally, there are still gray areas, especially with enforcement.

"Once someone's in the building, it's hard to stop them from smoking," Constantine admitted, although her co-op has never had a problem. "We just have to do what we can."

August 27, 2007
WHAT IN 'TAR' NATION
By Chuck Bennett and Selim Algar

China's toys are made with poisonous paint, its pet food and toothpaste have been contaminated, and its cough medicine has proven deadly - but at least its bogus bootleg cigarettes have less tar than American-made genuine smokes.

Counterfeit Newport cigarettes seized this month by Nassau County cops have less tar on average than the legitimate smokes, according to a surprising chemical analysis.

The results were provided to The Post by Arista Laboratories, a Richmond, Va.-based firm that specializes in tobacco testing.

There were 16.04 milligrams of cancer-causing tar on average in the fake cigs, compared with 17.43 milligrams in the real ones.

The test results fly in the face of what some authorities have contended - that fake cigarettes contain more hazardous compounds.

In addition, the carbon-monoxide content of the imitations was also lower - 14.16 milligrams, compared with 17.47 milligrams in the legitimate ones.

But they are far from a "safer" smoke. The fake cigarettes yielded on average 7.5 puffs compared to 7.2 puffs for the real ones.

And the fakes also pack more heart-disease-inducing nicotine, at 1.21 milligrams, compared to 1.15 milligrams for the real ones.

"They make these things without any standards or tests, so you really don't know what's in them," said Detective Sgt. Pat Ryder of the Nassau County Police Department.

The fake cigarettes were seized Aug. 9 in a Corona, Queens, warehouse after a five-month joint investigation by Nassau and Queens authorities. The raiders netted nearly 60,000 cartons, with a street value of $3.4 million.

Lorillard Tobacco Co., the manufacturer of real Newports, declined to comment.

August 18, 2007
WEIGHING 'EVILS': TERROR VS. TOBACCO
Editorial

The NYPD report proclaiming that more than 24 "clusters" of possible homegrown terrorists threaten millions of New Yorkers throws into sharp relief a proposal by City Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens), who wants to divert precious NYPD resources to ticket adults for . . . smoking cigarettes.

Once again: According to the NYPD, the threat of terrorism from homegrown "clusters" is greater than previously imagined, thus obviously requiring renewed vigor in New York's defense.

And Gennaro thinks cops are better used to fight tobacco.

Gennaro, whose Web site advertises him as "one of the New York City Council's most thoughtful and effective legislators," wants to ban adults from smoking in cars when children are present. He wants the NYPD to enforce the measure.

In a city of limited resources, priorities must be set. Among the challenges facing New York, it's hard to see how smoking in cars even makes the list.

Indeed, using cops to enforce good-parenting measures encumbers officers just as their first duty grows more serious.

This is a mistake. As any truly thoughtful legislator would know.

August 15, 2007
BLACK-MARKET-BUTT BLUES
Editorial

The arrest of three Chinese nationals on charges of running a Queens-based multimillion-dollar cigarette-smuggling ring gives a whole new reason to worry about black-market butts.
According to Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, who oversaw the investigation, the contraband smokes had illegally high levels of nicotine and tar. Thus tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been smoking unusually harmful cigarettes.

An estimated 35 percent to 50 percent of the cigarettes New Yorkers smoke are counterfeit. A recent study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health associates taxes with this shift in supply, observing: "Purchasing from [buttleggers] was the principal behavioral response to the tax increase by smokers." That is, fewer people gave up the habit than resorted to buying contraband.

The Queens bust indicates just how entrenched the cigarette-smuggling trade has become. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearm agents retrieved more than 57,960 cartons of illegal smokes from an unmarked Corona warehouse (a street value topping $3.4 million), plus $350,000 in cash.

"The number of contraband cigarettes, whether untaxed [out-of-state] or counterfeit, has increased," said New York-based ATF Special Agent Joseph Green. "The primary problems with counterfeit cigarettes are that they're lacking quality control. We have no idea what's even being put into these cigarettes."

Scaling back New York's cigarette tax to a reasonable level would be the quickest solution to this public-health threat; it would also deliver an always-welcome blow to Hezbollah, North Korea, China and Vietnam, all of whom allegedly are in on the take.

Cutting the tax just makes sense.

August 15, 2007
CIGGIES MAKE KIDS CARSICK: QNS. POL
By Frankie Edozien

A Queens lawmaker wants to expand the city's smoking ban to cars when people under age 18 are riding.
City Councilman James Gennaro said he will unveil his smoke-free auto proposal today at City Hall, backed by a group of anti-smoking activists.

"We want to continue to fight to denormalize smoking," the Queens Democrat said yesterday.

Like the seat-belt law, his proposal would subject smokers in cars with children present to fines of about $200.

"Cigarette smoke has over 4,000 chemicals in it, and 150 of them are known to be poisonous," Gennaro, chairman of the council's Environmental Protection Committee, told The Post.

He said he'd seen too many times drivers puffing away with no regard for the health of their young passengers.

"Kids shouldn't be around smoking, period, but in cars it's particularly egregious. This provides an opportunity to give kids a break when they are in the car," the councilman said.

Gennaro has been the councilman for the neighborhoods of Kew Gardens Hills, Hillcrest and Jamaica Estates since 2002, and said he has fought against hiking the city's water rates.

Before being elected, Gennaro served as a policy adviser to former Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., under whose tenure the first smoking ban, which mandated that restaurants have smoking sections, was passed.

August 14, 2007
BUTT-LEGGERS
By Selim Algar

Holy smokes!

A five-month probe into a massive counterfeit-cigarette ring led to the takedown of a Queens crew that sold dangerous bootlegged Chinese smokes to retailers across the tri-state area, Virginia and Kentucky, authorities said yesterday.

The investigation ended with a raid last Thursday on an unmarked Corona warehouse, where authorities uncovered roughly 60,000 cartons - or 600,000 packs - of fraudulent brand-name cigarettes with a street value of more than $3 million. Agents also seized $350,000 in cash.

Authorities said half of the historic haul originated in China while other cartons were smuggled in from southern states to avoid hefty New York tobacco taxes.

Ringleaders shipped in the Chinese smokes for roughly $12 per carton and then flipped them to restaurants and small stores for roughly $25, a steep markdown from the $70 normally charged in New York.

Three Chinese nationals were arrested in connection with the bust. Min Liang Yu, 21, Ru Dong Chen, 46, and Yulin Zhuang, 43, were all notable players in the operation, according to authorities.

The group's leader, an unnamed 55-year-old Chinese national, is cooperating with police and will likely be charged.

Calling the scope of the venture "unbelievable," Kathleen Rice, the district attorney of Nassau County, where the investigation originated, said the Chinese Marlboros and Newports had illegally high tar and nicotine levels that posed a public health risk.

Rice, who was joined by Queens DA Richard Brown at a press conference yesterday, estimated that the ring cost Nassau County roughly $1 million in lost taxes.

The warehouse raid also yielded several boxes of fake Nike Air Force 1 sneakers in both black and white that were sold on the street at steep discounts.

Authorities said the busts stemmed from the single arrest of man suspected of selling counterfeit smokes. Ensuing surveillance led them to the nondescript Queens warehouse.

Detective Sgt. Pat Ryder of the Nassau County Police Department's asset-forfeiture unit said cops watched the location's activity for months.

"There were people in and out of there all day, five days a week," he said. "Vans, trucks, cars, all the time."

"These guys were ingenious," said Paul Rossi, deputy director of the New York State Office of Tax Enforcement, noting that the crew used computer-generated tax stamps that allowed them to charge higher prices.

July 12, 2007
'HAIRSPRAY' GETS A CIG-NATURE RATING
By Lou Lumenick

'HAIRSPRAY" is the first movie to be cited for a smoking scene under the movie ratings board's new policy - and anti-smoking forces are burned up because it only got a lenient PG.
The film version of the Broadway musical starring John Travolta, opening July 20, is rated PG (parental guidance suggested) for "language, some suggestive content and momentary teen smoking."

Set in Baltimore of the 1960s, the flick includes a fleeting scene of smoking in a high school bathroom. There are also brief shots of a character billed in the credits as "smoking teacher" in a faculty lounge, as well as pregnant mothers smoking and drinking during a musical number.

When the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board announced it would add smoking as a criterion in May, it specifically said "historic or other mitigating context'' would be considered.

The "Hairspray'' rating was criticized by anti-smoking groups, who have been calling for a mandatory R rating for all films that depict smoking, on the grounds that such scenes encourage teen smoking.

"I don't know that just because a movie takes place in the '60s that it justifies a PG, since 14- and 15-year-olds are in the bull's-eye for the cigarette market," says Sheryl Healton, president of American Legacy Foundation. "It's really unfortunate and a disappointingly anemic response to a public health problem."

"It's an issue we take very seriously,'' responds Seth Oster, a spokesman for the MPAA. "Parents have more information now than ever before. If smoking is pervasive enough, it could result in the movie's rating to be moved up.''

The ratings board has given PG-13 ratings for three upcoming movies that include smoking, and awarded PG ratings to three others for reasons including "brief'' smoking.

May 27, 2007
CIG BAN? WHAT CIG BAN?
By Angela Montefinise

While Mayor Bloomberg tries to make the world safe from greenhouse gases, his cigarette ban is going up in smoke.

Scores of trendy clubs and neighborhood pubs across the five boroughs have become smoking speakeasies, where bartenders and bouncers regularly ignore the prohibition launched in 2003.

The Post spotted scofflaw smokers openly puffing away in a dozen bars and clubs in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island during the past few weeks - including celebrity hangouts Bungalow 8, Tenjune, Butter, Marquee, Plumm and Guest House.

The violations The Post witnessed include:

* A bartender and 15 patrons smoking all night inside Doyle's Corner bar in Astoria on the rainy night of May 16. The same scenario was witnessed several weeks earlier.

* A half-dozen hipster patrons at Brooklyn Ale House in Williamsburg smoking openly at the bar and at back tables early Saturday morning.

* A bartender at Boat in Brooklyn saying, "It's 12:30. You can smoke now," as they passed out makeshift ashtrays last Wednesday night.

Earlier, she told a patron to stop smoking, but after her announcement, a number of patrons started up again and the bar was filled with smokers for another hour.

* Dozens of smokers puffing on the dance floor and in the VIP area at the Marquee club on back-to-back nights as security guards looked the other way last week.

* At least 10 people smoking in Chelsea's small, exclusive club Bungalow 8 Thursday night. A security guard walked past the smokers to tell The Post, "You can't take pictures in here."

* Half the patrons of the Annadale Inn in Staten Island lighting up in the wee hours after the bartender closed the window gate to keep out prying eyes several weeks ago.

* Several smokers blowing smoke in the small basement of Lit Lounge on Second Avenue last week.

"They used to" enforce the smoking ban, Brett, a Marquee regular, told The Post last week. "But they barely pay attention now."

Smoking has been prohibited in bars, nightclubs and restaurants since March 2003, after the Bloomberg initiative became law in the fall of 2002.

Establishments are responsible for prohibiting smoking indoors, putting up "no smoking" signs and eliminating all ashtrays. Smokers are not punished.

Fines of up to $2,000 can be issued for every violation, and after three in one year businesses could lose their licenses. From April 2006 to March 2007, nine businesses were permanently shut due to smoking.

The city Department of Health said most businesses have been compliant, although there are violators. "We can't be everywhere all the time," a spokeswoman said.

Agency statistics show 199 establishments hit with 542 violations from April 2006 to March 2007, compared to 162 establishments getting 258 violations in the prior 12-month period. The number of complaints dropped from about 3,000 to 2,000 from last year to this year.

"It's a lose-lose," said an employee of a popular club on West 27th Street. "If we send people outside to smoke, people in the neighborhood got annoyed about the noise. If we let them smoke inside, we get hit with fines."

Allowing smoking indoors is "the lesser of two evils," he said.

Katie Browne, 26, a New Jersey paralegal and frequent clubgoer, said she has noticed a rise in smoking at nightspots over the past year.

"I hate it. My clothes are back to smelling like smoke, and it's gross," she said. "But there's no doubt about it - smoking's back."

May 21, 2007
VALLONE EYES BUTT STAMPS
By Maggie Haberman

In a bid to clamp down on the tax-dollar-bleeding illegal-cigarette trade, a city councilman is joining a push for state laws requiring encrypted tax stamps on packs of butts to prevent counterfeiting.

"This is a serious public-safety issue," said Peter Vallone (D-Queens), who has introduced a resolution calling for new tax stamps.

He cited reports that have estimated tax losses "well into the millions" being funneled to terrorist groups.

May 14, 2007
CIG-NIFICANT DROP IN N.Y. SMOKERS' QUIT KITS
By Chuck Bennett

Maybe they quit quitting.

Fewer New Yorkers than ever have opted for city-sponsored nicotine patches and nicotine gum to help wean them off cigarettes, Health Department data shows.

This year, only about 19,960 New Yorkers signed up for the free nicotine replacement therapy since the three-week program was launched April 25. The program ends tomorrow.

The city stockpiled 60,000 courses of the nicotine gum and patches this year. It gave away 35,000 patch boxes last year, and 45,000 patch boxes in 2005.

Sarah Perl, the Health Department's assistant commissioner for tobacco control, said she hopes the data indicate that more people are quitting on their own, especially in light of the city's graphic ads featuring ex-smoker and cancer victim Renaldo Martinez.

"Quitting smoking is the single most important thing smokers can do," Perl said. "Nicotine replacement therapy can double the chances for success. It's only free for the next few days."

The patch and gum are available by calling 311.

The program, which began in 2003, costs $4 million a year. The city estimates that it prevents 1,000 premature deaths annually.

Perl said outreach efforts need to better target men and smokers under the age of 24, who are more resistant to quitting. A few hundred smokers under 24 have signed up so far.

Perl said the department is very happy with the $2 million Martinez ad campaign, despite grumbling by many New Yorkers that it's too shocking.

"We're developing more hard-hitting ads," she said. "You are just going to have stay tuned."

May 12, 2007
$MOKE SIGNALS
By Kenneth Lovett

ALBANY - Mayor Bloomberg's push to raise the city cigarette tax by 50 cents has received the backing of a powerful state assemblyman.

Herman "Denny" Farrell, the Manhattan Democrat who chairs his house's Ways and Means Committee, introduced a bill this week giving the city permission to hike its cig tax to $2.

That would be on top of the $1.50 state excise tax.

Bloomberg 's push is expected to meet strong resistance in the Republican-led Senate, where Majority Leader Joseph Bruno has said he will not consider any tax increases this year.

May 3, 2007
STRESS BEATS CIG QUITTERS
By Chuck Bennett

Relaxation may be the secret to beating nicotine, a new city survey suggests.

Nearly half of all relapsed smokers cited stress as the main reason they resumed the habit, according to a survey of 2,400 New Yorkers released yesterday by the city Health Department.

Another 19 percent blamed booze or social situations, 12 percent "just wanted one," 6 percent reported a personal tragedy, and 3 percent said the end of a pregnancy spurred them to smoke again.

Slightly less than 1 percent reported that city driving made them smoke again.

Overall, the study found women more likely than men, 56 percent to 41 percent, to blame stress for not beating their addiction.

May 3, 2007
CITY'S BID TO SHUT CIGAR BAR SNUFFED
By Dareh Gregorian

A Manhattan judge has snuffed the city's bid to shutter a popular East Side cigar bar.

Lawyers for the city had argued that the Cigar Lounge on East 62nd Street should be closed because it ran afoul of the Smoke Free Air Act, which bans smoking in all but a handful of public places.

The cigar bar contended it was operating legally because it was in existence before the ban, and the city had been straining to find technicalities to shut it down.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger sided with the bar, finding the city's decision not to issue it a permit was "arbitrary and capricious."

Among the arguments the city Department of Health had used to find that the Cigar Lounge was not exempt from the law was that it had changed owners in 2003.

Schlesinger found that claim was a stretch, because the same people owned the bar - they had simply placed their ownership shares in a family trust.

April 7, 2007
GROUND CONTROL TO DR. TOM
Editorial

Could Mayor Bloomberg be having second thoughts about his health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden?

That's probably too much to hope for, but for the first time since Frieden became chief of the municipal health police, Bloomberg has thrown cold water on one of his commissioner's schemes.

Mayor Mike says he's not so sure that government should be involved in performing, or even promoting, widespread circumcision as an AIDS preventative.

Actually, Frieden's initiative seems to have caught the mayor by surprise: At a press conference, Bloomberg hinted that the first he'd heard of the scheme was in The New York Times - where Frieden apparently ran for a burst of publicity before discussing it with his boss.

Frieden seized on a World Health Organization report, based on statistics from Africa, that endorsed male circumcision as an effective way to prevent the spread of AIDS.

The commissioner said that not only would the Health Department launch a widespread campaign to encourage adult men at high risk for AIDS to undergo the procedure, but also that he's asked the Health & Hospitals Corporation to perform them free for uninsured patients.

Problem is, the facts don't support such precipitous action.

For one thing, the WHO data involves heterosexual contact, while New York's highest-risk groups remain gay men and intravenous drug users.

Which is why gay groups are skeptical of the approach, noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has just begun to study the issue.

Rather than being directly involved, says Mayor Mike, government should focus on "giving advice and making sure that people are educated."

That's a good policy.

It's one Bloomberg might have considered before Frieden engineered bans on smoking and trans-fats, instituted an Orwellian city diabetes database and let slip the city's Rat Rangers on high-profile - but largely blameless - restaurants after the Taco Bell incident.

The circumcision scheme is merely a symptom.

The problem is Tom Frieden.

April 4, 2007
TOXIC TAXES
Editorial

Smoking can kill you.

Excessive taxation isn't so hot for you, either - on several levels.

Case in point: Yesterday, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi asked the state Legislature to let him impose a $2.00-a-pack cigarette tax.

"I want to do everything I can to discourage people from making the choice to smoke, and to quit smoking if they're already hooked," says Suozzi - parroting lines from Mike Bloomberg's playbook.

Indeed, Nanny Tom is inspired by the $1.50-a-pack tax that Bloomberg imposed in the city a while back.

Not to be outdone, Mike is meanwhile looking for another 50 cents per pack, to make the combined state and local tax on cigarettes sold in New York City $3.50 - pushing the retail price to $8.

Imagine how healthy New Yorkers will be then.

Or maybe not.

It stands to reason that such prices will cut smoking - at least on the margins. But at what collateral cost?

Tobacco remains a legal product, widely consumed despite the nanny-staters' efforts to tax it to perdition.

And, as is always the case in such circumstances, the staggering imposts have exacerbated disrespect for the law while creating a vibrant black market.

There is, of course, a brisk traffic in untaxed tobacco originating on Indian reservations all over the state; whether Gov. Spitzer has the nerve to do anything about it is a question that should be answered shortly.

Meanwhile, the Rockland County Journal News yesterday reported that black-market tobacco is costing New York state as much as $460 million in lost revenue.

Where those cigarettes are coming from should trouble anyone, says State Sen. Dale Volker (R-Erie County): "From dangerous cigarettes illegally imported from China to international terrorists profiting from illegal cigarette smuggling rings, our homes and families are threatened by [the] black-market trade."

The paper reports that the illicit traffic has been tracked to such unsavory origins as Hezbollah, North Korea, China and Vietnam.

It's no coincidence that an international black market has flourished as higher taxes are levied on an otherwise-legal product: As local and state governments force prices above $8 a pack, smokers seek out less expensive cigarettes.

It's called Economics 101.

Again, smoking can kill you.

So can Hezbollah.

March 11, 2007
TOBACCO-TAX TRIBULATIONS
Editorial

Question: What do you get when you cross a pol's addiction to taxpayer cash with his innate cowardliness?

Answer: A plan by state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Westchester) to split cigar- ette-tax revenues with Indian tribes - instead of collecting them in full as required, at the risk of tribal violence.

Just such violence may be in store if Gov. Spitzer does what he says he will - make good on his promise to collect full taxes from the tribes.

For years, Albany refused to enforce laws requiring tribal retailers to tax tobacco sales to non-Indian customers. (Sales to tribal members are exempt.)

Gov. George Pataki briefly tried to collect the taxes in '97 - but some tribes answered by shutting roadways, with 23 arrested in a mini-riot, and Pataki backed off. So don't be surprised by more violence if Spitzer tries.

Certainly the Seneca tribe's decision to add a tariff to cigs sold on its reservation - and to keep the cash for itself - is an indication of what's to come.

Meanwhile, Klein wants to split the baby - offering tribes half the tax money owed the state. But what's the point of having laws if groups can simply flout them (or have them rewritten) just by threatening disobedience?

Now, no one would ever accuse us of favoring any tax. But threats of violence must not be used to shape law, whether to raise or lower levies.

And if non-Indian retailers must collect taxes (as they willingly do), then so should those on reservations.

Of course, the whole problem stems from lawmakers' spending addiction. To fund mushrooming government programs, pols have raised tobacco taxes through the roof in recent years - claiming (disingenuously and without evidence) that smoking is a sin that can be curbed by taxing it.

The state slaps a $1.50 levy onto the cost of every pack; New York City tacks on another $1.50.

Here's a better idea: Why not scrap the tax altogether? That'll avoid violence and be fair - to Indians, non-Indians and, for a change, buyers.

OK, we know what you must be thinking: What are we smoking?

But, hey - it's worth a try.

March 4, 2007
POL SIGNALS SMOKE-TAX HEALTH AID
By Cathy Burke

Millions in proposed state health-care cuts could be restored - and then some - if New York could recoup the lost tax revenue from cigarettes sold on Indian reservations, a new report shows.

The report from state Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bx./W'chester) maintains that $270 million of uncollected tax revenue is lost to tribal sellers - more than enough to restore Gov. Spitzer's proposed $219 million proposed cuts to programs funded through the Health Care Reform Act of 2000.

Those funded programs provide health care for more than 1.3 million uninsured New Yorkers, as well as provide added prescription-drug coverage for seniors and funding for a variety of health and smoking-prevention activities.

"It is estimated the amount of state revenue lost to the state as a result of purchasing untaxed cigarettes at between $436 million and $576 million in 2004," the report states.

"Recent estimates from an internal New York state Senate document attribute more than $270 million of those lost cigarette tax revenues to Native American sellers operating on reservations and on the Internet."

New York already has a law banning most cigarette sales via the Internet or by telephone or mail to state residents, and online cigarette merchants can no longer legally accept credit cards.

But forcing tribal sellers to collect taxes has been more difficult, the report notes.

"Gov. Spitzer inherited a dysfunctional system of cigarette-excise taxation whose provision are still entirely unenforced on tribal sellers despite a 12-year-old Supreme Court decision upholding that enforcement," the report states.

The report recommends the governor resume negotiations with tribes to share tax revenue. Klein said he will introduce legislation requiring tribal merchants to collect cigarette taxes - but providing those revenues be evenly split between the state and tribal governments.

February 12, 2007
CIG-TAX DODGERS SPARED
By David Seifman

Thousands of cigarette-tax cheats are off the hook after city officials determined that it didn't pay to pursue them, The Post has learned.

The Finance Department is giving a pass to about 21,500 smokers who made cigarette purchases over the Internet without paying the $1.50-a-pack tax.

Owen Stone, a department spokesman, said lists of tax evaders obtained last year from two Web sites included 20,000 buyers who owed less than $500 each and about 1,500 who made one-time purchases resulting in $15 tax liabilities.

Deciding it would have cost more to hunt down the smokers than the city could get back, officials decided to concentrate on the top 4,000 tax dodgers - who ducked a total of $5.8 million in taxes.

"We succeeded in raising awareness on the issue and determined we were at the point that the resources needed to research the data, track down buyers and collect cigarette taxes from smaller purchasers who were not likely to be reselling cigarettes were better put to use on other enforcement alternatives," Stone said.

The big buyers have forked over about $2.3 million so far.

The department's action comes after City Councilman David Weprin (D-Queens) complained that constituents socked with high tax bills deserved some leeway because they weren't aware they were breaking the law.

January 20, 2007
QUEENS POL MOVES TO SNUFF PUFFING IN KID CARS
By Kenneth Lovett

ALBANY - Smokers who light up with kids in their cars would face stiff fines and possible jail time under a bill moving through the state Assembly.

The measure, sponsored by Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette (D-Queens), is similar to one that went into effect this week in Bangor, Maine, as well as those already in place in Arkansas, Louisiana and Puerto Rico - though the proposed fines are much steeper.

Under Lafayette's bill, a person found smoking with a child under age 16 in a car would be subject to a $500 fine on the first offense, a $1,000 fine on a second offense, and $1,500 and up to 10 days in jail for a third and subsequent offense.

The legislation already has been reported out of the Assembly Health Committee and referred to the powerful Codes Committee.

There is currently no sponsor for the bill in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr., the Long Island Republican who was a sponsor of the law banning smoking in most public places, said, "In the future, it's something to take a serious look at."

Smokers'-rights advocate Audrey Silk says she doubts there are any significant health effects from exposure to secondhand smoke in a car. She warns that banning smoking in a vehicle would be only a first step.

"Anybody with an ounce of sense understands that a car is private property," Silk said. "If they can come into our cars, it's no different than coming into our houses and saying you can't smoke if children are there, and they will do it."

March 30, 2008
Real estate companies making it tougher for smokers in their homes
By Xana O'Neill and Jordan Lite

They banned smoking in the bars and restaurants - and now they're coming into New Yorkers' homes.

City real estate companies are jumping on the anti-tobacco bandwagon with new policies that prohibit tenants from lighting up behind their own doors.

It's the latest anti-smoking trend to hit the city since Mayor Bloomberg banned lighting up in bars and restaurants five years ago Sunday.

Clare Walsh just moved into a loft rental at 270 Park Ave. South. Its owner, Pan Am Equities, doesn't allow smoking anywhere in its buildings - including inside the apartments of tenants with new leases.

"It has my full support," said Walsh, 52. "Smoking is a particularly unhealthy, unattractive activity."

City health officials do not have specific data on how many residential buildings have official smoking bans, but real estate experts say a national movement has sprung up around creating smoke-free homes.

"We're going with the times, with the city doing the bans with bars," said David Iwanier, Pan Am Equities' vice president. "We are considerate of everybody's needs, as well as [the need to] to compete with the marketplace."

Manhattan real estate manager Jeff Lamb said most of the roughly 30 co-ops and condos he handles have banned smoking or are in the process of adopting no-smoking house rules.

That means the co-op boards can deny new applicants if they're smokers, or require existing owners who smoke to ventilate their apartments or plug holes to protect their neighbors.

The trend began shortly after a Manhattan Civil Court judge ruled in 2006 that secondhand smoke exposure violates residents' warrant of habitability, Lamb said.

The same year, the U.S. surgeon general reported on health effects from secondhand smoke.

"I would think it's going to become more commonplace," said Lamb, president of J&C Lamb Management.

Still, he said, "In one case, the smoking person, being sensitive to these new guidelines, decided to sell her apartment."

Neither federal nor state laws prevent residential buildings from adopting smoke-free policies, said Jim Bergman of the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project.

Audrey Silk, founder of the smokers' rights group NYC Clash, calls the emerging residential policies just the latest in an "incremental attack."

"First, it was planes for two hours, then six hours, then all planes; then half of restaurants, then all restaurants," Silk said. "Now, the home."

On a smaller scale, individual New Yorkers are making their homes smoke-free. Some 75% of New Yorkers say they have no-smoking rules in their homes, up from 65% in 2006, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International for the NYC Coalition for a Smoke-Free City.

About four years ago, Caroline Haugen would tell party guests at her Gramercy Park apartment to smoke in the kitchen with the window open. Then she told them to lean out the window while they were puffing away.

In 2006, Haugen and her fiancé, Quentin, began posting "No Smoking" signs in their apartment, and sent violators outside for a drag. The rule isn't hard to enforce, she said, because now, many of their friends have quit.

Adult smoking across the five boroughs has dropped 19% since Bloomberg banned lighting up in bars and restaurants. About 240,000 people have quit, city statistics show.

The city also brags that bar and restaurant receipts, and employment are up since the ban, and that 97% of establishments comply with the city law.

At the Old Town Bar, a Union Square speakeasy where the white tin ceiling still is stained brown with a century's worth of cigarette and cigar tar, bartender John Chambers said the ban is good for business - and his health.

The 115-year-old pub, said to be the oldest in New York, is cleaner and no longer has smoke residue on the mirrors, Chambers said. And he's cut back by half from his daily pack of cigarettes.

"Customers would come in and say, 'Thank God for the smoking ban,'" Chambers, 56, recalled. "I smoke a lot less. It makes life easier. It's healthier for everybody."

A customer there, Brian Oestreich, disagrees with the ban in principle, but admitted it made him quit his 15-year addiction. He smoked his last cigarette at 12:30 a.m. on March 30, 2003, the day the ban took effect.

"I've definitely quit smoking because of the ban," said Oestreich, 35, of Park Slope, Brooklyn. "Not having a bar full of cigarette smoke removes that temptation."

November 4, 2007
Bill would stamp out Internet cigarette sales, sez Weiner
By Elizabeth Hays

Rep. Anthony Weiner wants to snuff out illegal on-line cigarette sales by making them a felony and by banning the delivery of cigarettes through the mail.

Weiner (D-Brooklyn/Queens) said his goal is to cut down on tax-free Internet sales - which cost the city some $40 million a year in lost revenue and have been linked to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

A recent federal study found that Hezbollah raised $1.5 million from illegal cigarette sales from 1996 to 2000.

Weiner's bill, which will be introduced tomorrow, comes on the heels of a similar U.S. Senate bill, introduced in March.

"I think there will be broad support here in New York because so much city and state funds are being lost," he said.

Under current law, illegal cigarette sales are considered a misdemeanor. Private carriers now voluntarily refuse to deliver online cigarette orders, but Weiner's bill would also ban the U.S. Postal Service from making the deliveries.

The bill would also allow the U.S. attorney general's office to keep a list of companies who flout the law and ban their deliveries.

"We don't know what other types of organized crime are also making use of this," added Weiner, who was joined by state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx/Westchester) in announcing the legislation.

July 8, 2007
        Illegal market blackens lungs
        Stealth cigarette sales hurt city's smoke fight
        By Jordan Lite

New York City's steep tax on cigarettes is aimed at convincing smokers that tobacco is bad for their health - and their wallet.

But a new study suggests that a booming black-market business is undercutting that effort in the poorest neighborhoods.

After the city hiked its cigarette tax from 8 cents to $1.50 per pack in 2002, the number of New Yorkers getting their fix through street hawkers rose from 6% to 9%, city health officials said.

"The bootlegging undermines the purpose of the tax increase, which is to get people to quit," said Dr. Donna Shelley of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, who published a study on the phenomenon.

"They're on the streets, in the subways, in the hospital, so even if you were thinking about quitting, they serve as a trigger to smoke," said Shelley, who published her findings in the American Journal of Public Health.

One recent day, hustlers on 125th St. and Lenox Ave. tried to hook passersby with shouts of "Newports!" and "Loosies!"

Packs were selling for $4 to $5, and single cigarettes were going for 50 cents. In some parts of Manhattan, one pack at a retail outlet can cost $9 after the $1.50 city tax and $1.50 state tax are tacked on.

A bootlegger named Stoney said he makes $200 to $300 each afternoon selling the contraband to sometimes-reluctant buyers.

"They always say, 'I'm trying to quit. I only want three cigarettes,'" he said. "By the time they get up the block, the cigarettes are gone and they want a pack."

Bootleggers also troll Fordham Road in the Bronx and parts of East New York and Bushwick in Brooklyn, said Richard Lipsky, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance.

Harlem student John Boulos, 23, buys the cheap butts "whenever they catch me."

Though he has tried to quit smoking "many times" in the past five years, Boulos doesn't blame the bootleggers.

"It's more stress than people selling cigarettes," he said.

City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said the 2002 tax hike - which made New York's levy on smokes the sixth-highest in the nation - drove down the percentage of adult smokers from 22% that year to 18% in 2006.

The reduction extended to poor areas. Central Harlem's rate dropped to 15% last year, though it shot up to 31% in East Harlem.

"Taxing cigarettes is the single most effective way to reduce tobacco use," Frieden said. "Small and even modest amounts of evasion don't change that one bit."

Despite the improvements, state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx) estimated in a report this year that the smoking rate would drop at least 2% more if all New York smokers had to pay the taxman.

City officials have doubled their retail inspections to 60 a month to check for counterfeit cigarette stamps and shut down Internet sites that weren't charging tax - collecting over $2 million owed to the city.

June 19, 2007
Pols mull deeper drag on smokers' cash
By Joe Mahoney

New York City smokers will have to shell out an estimated $4 more per carton of cigarettes under legislation that is advancing in both houses of the Legislature and has been getting bipartisan support.

The per-carton price upstate would jump by an estimated $3.

The measure increases the amounts cigarette wholesalers and retailers can pocket for every package of smokes they move in New York - but would result in no additional revenues for the state.

The price of a pack of cigarettes would jump by about 40 cents.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Marty Golden (R-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Robert Sweeney (D-Suffolk), argues that wholesalers and retailers are squeezed by higher costs for transporting and storing cigarettes.

Lobbyists for tobacco companies are trying to kill the measure, arguing smokers will bear the brunt of higher prices and predicting the legislation will drive more consumers to get untaxed cigarettes from smugglers.

March 31, 2007
Mayor's burning to increase cig tax
By Joe Mahoney

ALBANY - New York City would drag another 50cents per pack from smokers and exempt higher-priced clothing from sales tax under two City Hall proposals, the Daily News has learned.

If Mayor Bloomberg succeeds in raising the combined state and local tax on cigarettes to $3.50, the city would have the second-highest levy on smokes in the nation, trailing only Chicago at $3.66.

City Hall sources said the mayor thinks the $110 cap on garments exempt from 4% city sales tax should be eliminated.

The proposals, which require legislative approval, began cropping up as lawmakers raced to complete work by tonight on a state budget that the Spitzer administration said will result in many New York City property taxpayers qualifying for rebate checks averaging $127.

Gov. Spitzer said the state spending plan, expected to approach $122 billion when it is finalized, will achieve one of his top goals - providing public medical insurance to 400,000 kids who now lack coverage.

NY Sun - April 1, 2008
Cigarette Tax Hike: 'Gold Mine' for Smugglers
By Benjamin Sarlin

The proposed tax hike on cigarettes in the state budget would create a "black market gold mine" for smugglers and force New York smokers to pay the highest taxes in the nation, experts warn.

Facing a $5 billion budget gap, state lawmakers see doubling the state's cigarette tax, to $3 a pack, as a way to help weather a difficult economic period. The $3 tax would be the highest of any state in America, $0.42 higher than New Jersey, which currently holds the record, and $2.93 higher than South Carolina's lowest-in-thenation $0.07 tax. Smokers in New York City, which adds a $1.50 surcharge on cigarettes, would pay $4.50 a pack in taxes.

The tax hike, the first in six years, is expected to earn the state between $200 million and $300 million. A pack of premium cigarettes in New York City now costs $7 or $8; prices would rise to above $9. Opponents of the tax increase argue that higher prices would drive smokers to seek ways to evade the law and purchase cheaper cigarettes from smugglers or in neighboring states, blunting potential revenue gains for the state. "It's a black market gold mine," a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said of the proposed tax. "You have to invest resources in scores of attorneys, cops, and auditors, who are all part of the tax enforcement you need."

"By raising cigarette taxes you help fund the mob," the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, said. "Cigarettes are easier than liquor, as they're lighter and smaller per container. It leads to smuggling and smuggling is done best by organized crime."

Mr. Norquist said New York's proximity to states with lower taxes would lead smokers to cross the border to buy cigarettes, reducing tax revenue below state projections.

New York has seen significant increases in its cigarette tax rates before. In 2002, New York City's cigarette tax increased to $1.50 from $0.08, as part of an initiative by Mayor Bloomberg to encourage smokers to give up the habit. Although the taxes produced an increase in city and state revenue, some smokers took illegal measures to avoid paying the new tax, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

A 2007 report by the Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan city agency that analyzes the city's finances, found that 27% of city smokers and 34% of upstate smokers sometimes bought "under-taxed" cigarettes in 2006. These smokers avoided the tax by buying cigarettes from other states, ordering cigarettes over the Internet, and purchasing cigarettes at Indian reservations. The city lost an estimated $40 million in tax revenue as a result of cigarette tax evasion in 2006, according to the report.

"It encourages people not to be ripped off," the founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, Audrey Silk, said of cigarette taxes. "Any consumer who's so abused will look for ways to avoid it, making outlaws out of normally law-abiding citizens."

Supporters of the cigarette tax note that despite lost revenue to smuggling and other tax evasion methods, net tax revenue has increased in every state that has raised prices, though not always as much as predicted. In the city's case, tax revenue from cigarettes rose to $160 million from $30 million between 2002 and 2003, even after taking into account an agreement with the state that sent 46% of the city's cigarette tax revenue to Albany.

"Despite any smuggling or tax evasion going on, the state or local governments still make a big chunk of money from increasing their tax rates on cigarettes," the director for policy research at Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Eric Lindblom, said. "That's not to say there isn't any smuggling or tax evasion. There is."

Mr. Lindblom said certain methods reduce tax evasion. Governor Spitzer, for example, reached agreements with wholesalers, credit card companies, and postal services during his tenure as attorney general to restrict sales to illegal online cigarette retailers. Sales at Indian reservations pose a greater problem in New York State, Mr. Lindblom added, but can be addressed by better legislation and enforcement.

Associated Press - March 31, 2008
Proposed cigarette tax increase riles smokers in NY
By Carolyn Thompson

Jill Liddell was hardly alone while taking a smoke break outside a downtown office building, where she and other smokers were feeling singled out Monday as lawmakers considered a hefty increase in the state cigarette tax.

"I wish they would hit the drinkers for once," Liddell said.

Legislative leaders were talking about doubling the cigarette tax to $3 per pack to help the state make ends meet, but hadn't finalized the amount by Monday afternoon.

A per-pack increase of $1.25 or $1.50 would push the average price of cigarettes over $7 in New York.

"It's just an easy fix," responded smoker Tonya Pagan. "It's not being charged to alcohol or anything else that's legal. That's just the easiest way" for the state to make money.

Advocates praised the idea as potentially life saving, while opponents, including convenience store chains, said it would hurt business.

The Center for a Tobacco Free New York estimated that raising the excise tax by $1.50 would convince about 6 percent of the state's smokers _ about 168,800 adults _ to kick the habit.

"Raising the price through higher taxes encourages adult smokers to quit and discourages children from starting," said Russ Sciandra, the center's director.

But several smokers in Buffalo predicted they would just have more company on Indian reservations, where they buy untaxed cigarettes at big discounts. The Seneca Indian Nation sells cigarettes at numerous stores within a 30-minute drive of Buffalo.

Becky Daniels pays about $9 per carton for a reservation "no-name brand," just $2 more than a single pack would cost after the proposed tax hike. Pagan gets her Newports from reservation vendors for about $27 per carton, about half what she would pay at a regular store.

But they and others said they felt for fellow smokers without the means to make the trip.

"The state is after any money they can get. They're always trying to take money away from the working people," Daniels said.

The New York City-based Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, or CLASH, called the proposed tax increase punitive and in a press release urged legislators to "reject this theft."

"Cigarettes are a legal product," the group wrote. "Considering the abundance of anti-smoking ads it's impossible to conclude that adults are not making an informed choice."

It was unknown whether any of the revenue raised from the proposed increase would go to state-supported stop-smoking programs. There are 19 smoking cessation centers around the state and most state residents are eligible for enough free patches, gum and lozenges to begin the quitting process, Health Department spokeswoman Claudia Hutton said.

NY Sun - March 27, 2008
Post-Smoking Ban, City Gains 10 Million Lbs.
By E.B. Solomont

New York City residents are growing obese at a rate nearly three times that of other Americans, prompting some who cited a link between weight gain and smoking cessation to question whether the city's crackdown on smoking may have had an unexpected result.

In a new study, city health officials found that obesity and diabetes rates here increased 17% between 2002 and 2004. By contrast, there was a 6% increase in national obesity rates during that time, and no significant increase in the rate of diabetes. City residents also gained 10 million pounds collectively during the two-year period, researchers found. The findings were reported in the April issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

While public health officials said the findings underscored the need for disease prevention programs, others drew a correlation between the rising obesity rate and a smoking ban that took effect in the city's bars and restaurants in 2003. According to city health officials, about 240,000 New Yorkers quit smoking since the agency launched a comprehensive antismoking campaign in 2002.

Weight gain among individuals who quit smoking has been well documented. According to one study that evaluated weight gain after smoking cessation, researchers found the risk of weight gain is highest during the two years after a person quits. The study, published in 1998 in the Journal of Family Practice, found that on average, those who quit gain between 11 and 13 pounds.

"What you see on the micro level of your friends gaining weight after they quit smoking has to also have an effect on the macro level," a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Walter Olson, said. "Yes, it probably is true that one of the reasons America is gaining weight is because of tobacco going out." He said the ban was probably "one factor among many" contributing to the high obesity rates here.

Critics of the ban took a harder stand. "While they're trying to save one segment of society… they're getting nowhere because it has a negative effect elsewhere," the founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, Audrey Silk, said.

City health and mental hygiene officials acknowledged the timing but said they had no evidence that the crackdown on smoking had caused obesity rates to increase. Instead, the study's authors pointed to the city's demographic makeup and cited New York's large population of high-risk individuals, including blacks and Hispanics and those living in poverty. In a related study, also released yesterday, health officials blamed soda consumption for the city's obesity rates. About 27% of adults drink one or more sodas daily, researchers found. Nationwide, 34% of Americans — or 72 million individuals — are obese and about 7% of the population has diabetes.

In New York City, more than 1.7 million city residents are obese and about 700,000 have diabetes. According to the study, the obesity rate in 2004 climbed to 22.8%, up from 19.5% two years earlier. During the same two-year period, the diabetes rate increased to 9.5% from 8.1%. In raw numbers, researchers found, about 173,500 adults in New York City became obese and 73,600 developed diabetes between 2002 and 2004. New Yorkers are less likely to be obese than the rest of America, but they are more diabetes prone. While the increases were not limited to one neighborhood, the report found that among Hispanics, the obesity rate grew 14%, to 26.2% in 2004, up from 22.9% in 2002.

The rate also increased among the city's immigrants, who previously had lower rates of obesity and diabetes. Among foreign-born New Yorkers, the obesity rate increased 33% to 22.4% in 2004, up from 16.8% in 2002.

"The problem is, we have seen increases in these very large groups," the health department's director of research, evaluation, and planning, Gretchen Van Wye, said. She said the largest increases occurred among the fastest-growing populations. Ultimately, both conditions would become even more "pervasive," she said.

New York City doctors treating diabetic patients said the disease already is widespread.

Earlier this week, Lighthouse International opened a diabetes center to help patients adapt to diabetes-related vision loss. According to Lighthouse's president and CEO, Tara Cortes, diabetes causes about 25,000 new cases of blindness annually nationwide. "Vision loss is one of the side effects of diabetes that a lot of people don't think about," she said. "It affects probably half of people with diabetes."

Last week, the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University Medical Center received a $21 million gift from the Russell Berrie Foundation earmarked for research and patient care.

Yesterday, a physician there, Dr. Lauren Golden, said even those without diabetes should be mindful of risk factors, including a sedentary lifestyle and obesity. "Nobody is immune from this," she said.

Associated Press - March 27, 2008
Lobbyists push for tax increases to offset budget shortfall
By Valerie Bauman

ALBANY -- Lobbyists are making a last-minute push for higher taxes on millionaires and smokers as the budget deadline approaches in less than a week.

With a $4.6 billion budget deficit looming, two lobbying campaigns claim to have partial solutions to the state's financial burdens as lawmakers push to meet the April 1 deadline for a new budget....

...Another group pushing for a tax increase is the Center for a Tobacco Free New York. The coalition spent $200,000 on radio advertisements and print ads that support doubling the $1.50 cigarette tax for a total $3 per-pack tax.

The ad starts with a song reminiscent of superhero cartoon themes, and a deep voice proclaiming "Most New York leaders can't bend steel with their bare hands. None can leap tall buildings with a single bound. But all can save lives with a single vote to increase the cigarette tax."

The ad argues that the increase would raise more than $480 million and prevent more than 290,000 children and teenagers from starting smoking. Anti-smoking groups have long sought to increase the cost of buying cigarettes to deter people from the habit.

"The state can generate substantial new revenue and they'll also see a substantial decrease in health costs," said Jennifer Cucurullo, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society.

"This is just a money grab by the antismoking crowd," said Audrey Silk, founder of the New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. "They're just shameless, and on top of it all, it creates nothing more than an incentive for the lucrative black market to step in."

The coalition is buying ads in all major daily newspapers outside of New York City.

Associated Press - March 21, 2008
AC to try again with total casino smoking ban
By Wayne Parry

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- The City Council will try again next week to enact a total ban on smoking at the 11 Atlantic City casinos, nearly a year after a partial ban was enacted limiting smoking to no more than 25 percent of the casino floor.

Councilman Bruce Ward said Friday he will introduce a measure at next Wednesday's council meeting to ban all smoking on the casino floor. He said three others on the nine-member council have said they will support the measure and that he is close to convincing a fifth member to sign on.

"There has been a year of compromise, and the public health issues are compelling," Ward told The Associated Press Friday. "It's really time to cut bait here and let's go forward."

In February 2007, the council was poised to enact a total smoking ban, but backed down in the face of intense opposition from the casino industry, which feared it could lose as much as 20 percent of its revenue and as many as 3,400 jobs.

The council then adopted a compromise ordinance requiring at least 75 percent of the casino floor to be nonsmoking.

Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Friday.

The law also required the gambling halls to build permanent, walled-off, ventilated areas, although no deadline was imposed on them to complete the work. None has even started such an enclosure.

"There's no chance it's going to be implemented," Ward said. "It's clear that's not going to happen."

Ward cited a ruling last month in which a state worker's compensation judge determined that years of breathing secondhand smoke at the former Claridge Casino Hotel gave a dealer lung cancer.

Michele Holcomb, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society, said she hopes the total ban passes this time.

"We still have thousands of workers who are still not protected from secondhand smoke and are exposed to illnesses including cancer," she said.

Press of Atlantic City - March 21, 2008
Atlantic City Council will again consider full smoking ban in casinos
By Michael Clark

ATLANTIC CITY - Year two, round two.

City Council will again attempt to outlaw smoking in city casinos next week as the passage of a watered-down ban approaches its first anniversary.

"It was somewhat self-executing in that the one-year anniversary is almost here and little has been done to comply with the partial ban," Councilman Bruce Ward said on Friday.

A full ban was initially proposed in February 2007 before officials amended the ordinance to a partial ban in the face of intense opposition from the resort's casinos. The measure allowed smoking in 25 percent of each casino, upsetting many. Arguments increased as the months progressed, with non-smoking advocates complaining that the casinos were dragging their feet to enact what the ordinance called for.

"I never felt that the 75/25 was a permanent solution," Ward said. "It did provide; I hate to use the term, breathing room for casinos."

The law required the casinos to erect new walls and create new, ventilated areas for smokers, but that work has yet to begin. No deadline was set for the areas to be completed and no work was ever enforced beyond the measure.

Joe Corbo, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, did not immediately return calls for comment Friday.

Ward said he and his Councilman Eugene Robinson, who co-sponsored the first ordinance with Ward last year, have solidified two other approval votes on the nine-member City Council.

"And I think we have some leaners," he said.

Councilman John Schultz characterizes himself as one member on the fence, but his comments seem tell a different story.

"We should do it the day after Vegas does it," he said in a phone interview Friday. "I mean, I agree with (the non-smoking advocates) 100 percent, but then again, you have to look at our competition."

But discussions of legislation to ban smoking in Connecticut and Pennsylvania casinos has perked the interest of city officials and full ban proponents. A legal opinion issued earlier this month in Connecticut may allow lawmakers to extend a state smoking ban to the American-Indian casinos, which claim that smoking restrictions would be a threat to tribal sovereignty.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania lawmakers have been debating legislation that would make casinos completely smoke-free or limit smoking to only 25 percent of the gaming space, similar to Atlantic City's casino smoking restrictions.

WSYR-TV - March 21, 2008
Proposed Smoking Ban in Ithaca

Ithaca, New York – More and more central New York communities are restricting folks from smoking in public areas. Since August, the towns of Camillus, Marcellus, DeWitt and the village of North Syracuse placed smoking bans in certain parts of their neighborhoods. Now, the city of Ithaca is looking to create similar regulations.

The Ithaca Common Council is considering banning smoking near playgrounds, schools, doorway entrances, trails, walkways, city-owned garages, parks, and the commons.

“Just leave places for us, like that corner and that little area,” said Maxymo Corbalan, a smoker.

Corbalan isn't too thrilled with the idea. He says folks should be able to smoke wherever they want to.

“We deserve to have a cigarette while we're just walking and don't have to walk like five miles to a smoking area and then come back, because that's not right.”

City leaders say the proposal is necessary for a few very simple reasons. 1) Only 19% of adults in Tompkins County smoke. 2) Half of them said in a survey they want to quit. 3) Folks are just fed up with second-hand smoke.

“Well, I'm in favor of it,” said Ted Schiele, the Coordinator of Tobacco Free Tompkins County. Scheile says the ban would help residents kick their nasty habit.

”Public health and people have a right to be able to be out in public places and have them smoke free.”

Most councilors are in favor of the ban, so are