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By Mario Mancini
A top state law enforcement group wants to stop Gov. Hochul’s planned ban on menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco while raising the tax on smokes by $1 — claiming it’ll fuel the black market, be hard to enforce and worsen police-community relations, NY Post reported.
The unusual blowback comes from the New York State Sheriffs’ Association, which pushed back in a Feb. 15 letter to Hochul, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Post.
The group, which is representing the city’s sheriff’s office and others across the state, cited a study that found more than half of cigs smoked in New York are smuggled in, draining $1 billion in tax revenue and flouting tobacco regs according to The New York Post.
“We believe the proposed flavored tobacco ban and excise tax increase will only exacerbate this problem and provide hundreds of millions of dollars in additional illicit profit to criminals and criminal organizations,” Sheriff’s Association executive director Peter Kehoe wrote in a letter to Governor Hochul. “Our long experience has been that there is always adjacent criminal activity to any black market. Any further increase in crime will be a burden on our already strained resources.”
Cigarette sellers have accused Hochul of a double standard, according to The New York Post — proposing a ban on flavored tobacco while allowing sales of flavor-infused and fruity-scented marijuana merch. New York bans the sale of flavored vaping products.
Kehoe argues cracking down on “new types of contraband that has heretofore been widely available and socially accepted” will only cause more friction with the public.
“Police-community relations are still in a delicate state. Scrutinizing citizens and business
establishments for what many will likely consider a garden-variety vice could exhaust what remaining goodwill law enforcement has with the people,” the letter stated.
The stance aligns with Gwenn Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after being put in an illegal chokehold by an NYPD officer while being arrested on suspicion of illegally selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island. Carr contends a ban could lead to more “unintended consequences.”
Kehoe also told The New York Post that outlawing flavored tobacco in Massachusetts was offset by increased sales in smokes in neighboring New Hampshire and Rhode Island — triggering a “significant black market” in the Bay State.
The Sheriffs’ letter urged Hochul to scrap the proposed ban — and to work with law enforcement “to develop targeted strategies to combat the existing illicit tobacco trade” that “undermines public health policy by trafficking cheap and unregulated tobacco” to New York and its youngsters.
Powerful Assembly Majority Leader Crystal People-Stokes, a Buffalo Democrat, and a group of black ministers also oppose the ban, preferring an educational stop-smoking campaign.
New York City has a huge cigarette black market already, as the average price of a pack of coffin-nails in NYC is $17. A trip to the outer Boroughs, will find cigarette packs as low as $9, as intrepid bodega owners drive over to Virginia and other states to get cartons at a decent price.
