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An 18-year-old Town of Niagara man was granted youthful-offender status Wednesday for his role in a cigarette scam . . . A co-defendant, John T. Billings Jr., 24, of 92nd Street, Niagara Falls, admitted to fourth-degree grand larceny but failed to appear for sentencing . . .
He and the teenager convinced a man Sept. 14 that they could sell him a large cache of untaxed smokes from the Tuscarora Indian Reservation, but took his money and delivered no cigarettes.
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The Niles Town Board has nixed a proposed law prohibiting the use of smokeless tobacco products in town buildings and town vehicles.
While state law regulates smoking in public places, it does not address the issue of other forms of tobacco use.
The ordinance would have imposed a maximum fine of $250 and 15 days in Cayuga County Jail for using smokeless tobacco products in town buildings, on municipal grounds or in town vehicles.
The board voted 3-2 against the proposal at its meeting Thursday night, mainly because of enforcement issues and possible infringement on individual rights. Bernard Juli and Alberta Winters voted for the law, while town Supervisor Rick Slagle, Glenn Porter and Clarence Edmonds voted against it.
Board members decided to hold a work session before the next regular town board meeting to discuss options other than creating an ordinance prohibiting such use.
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, in an attempt to gain support for a $2 per pack cigarette tax, said he is negotiating with Gov. David A. Paterson to give nearly half of any county revenue earned from the tax to the cash-strapped state to make up for any anticipated loss of revenue from sales.
Suozzi's comments come after Assembly lawmakers last month balked at approving the bill, apparently because of opposition by Paterson, and recessed for the summer. Tuesday, Paterson declined to comment.
But Suozzi Tuesday again called for state legislators in Albany to approve the cigarette tax to help plug a Nassau budget deficit.
Before too long, you may be forced to stare at a photo of blackened lungs, oozing decay, every time you go to the bodega for a quart of milk. We're trying to figure out where under the heading of quality of life to file this bit of news.
The photo is the latest idea from the city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, part of its nonstop campaign to acquaint the citizenry with the wickedness of smoking. Show smokers right there at the checkout counter how much gunk coats their lungs and maybe they will reconsider plunking down that Hamilton for a pack of cigarettes. That's the theory.
You might have thought that by now, even the most benighted smoker must know that the habit is destructive, no matter how satisfying in the short term. We've only had decades of government warnings on cigarette packs . . .
Well before the government first ordered those warnings, in 1964, cigarettes were routinely referred to as cancer sticks and coffin nails. Those were not intended as phrases of affection. . . .
The thing is, though, that despite his department's estimate that a million New Yorkers continue to smoke, most of us don't. Yet under the proposed new regulations, anyone who goes to the corner store will have to look at blackened lungs and possibly more. An assistant health commissioner, Sarah B. Perl, was quoted in The Daily News as saying that people are going to see what cancer of the mouth and the throat look like.
Really now, is it necessary to be subjected to such photos when all you want is a carton of orange juice? . . .
Why stop with cigarettes?
Why not require pictures of morbidly obese people at candy counters
Meet the new Tom -- same as the old Tom.
That would be Tom Farley, Mayor Mike's replacement for ex-city Health Commissioner Tom Frieden, recently departed for the Obama administration.
Frieden lived to stick his nose in other people's business -- totally for their own good, of course -- and it seems that Farley is struck from the same mold.
New Yorkers who didn't see enough of Frieden's disgusting anti-smoking evangelism on TV can now expect even more revolting agit-prop in the corner bodega -- courtesy of Farley. . . .
what's in the works now is about power, not public health.
Mayor Mike and his new health commisar mean to festoon food stores with massive, disgustingly graphic images because they can, not because they should.
Indeed, Mike's the one who needs to get the message.
Please just stop it.
Jonathan Tasini, former president of the National Writers Union, will challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (the unelected occupant of the junior Senate seat, placed there by our unelected governor) in the September 2010 Democratic primary.
Tasini, who defeated former Sen. Hillary Clinton in the city of Ithaca in the 2006 Senate primary, provides a genuinely progressive alternative to Gillibrand, a corporate lawyer who has worked for Big Tobacco (Philip Morris) and has been a pro-gun, anti-immigrant "Blue Dog" Democrat during her tenure in Congress.
Tasini could win this race, if progressive Democrats spread the word about his candidacy
HARRISON Ford got pulled into a wacky publicity stunt the other day when two hotties in black tank tops, shorts and high-heels sneaked past security on the set of his movie, "Morning Glory," at 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue. "He was in between takes with Rachel McAdams when these girls came right out of the blue to present him with a $750 Gurkha cigar," a spy told us. "He got a big kick out of it and thanked them." Turns out the generous cuties were promoting a service called delivery.com.
Youth groups and other social services would be the first victims of the State Legislature's failure to pass a $2 per pack cigarette tax that Nassau County had sought.
County Executive Thomas Suozzi had bet on the cigarette tax to plug a $27-million hole in this year's budget. Without it, funding for youth and other programs would be cut, which would force them to severely curtail services to thousands of clients. Suozzi said the cuts would begin July 1.
The Assembly adjourned this week without acting on the cigarette tax and the Senate hasn't taken it up. Though that was unrelated to the current leadership mess in the State Senate, two other measures being sought by Nassau County are tied up by that dispute.
The Cayuga County Tobacco Free Partnership has lost it's $145,000 state grant and will close its doors July 31, program coordinator Anne E. McCarthy said. The partnership, operated under the auspices of the Cayuga Community Health Network, had received funding for the past five years.
"There will be no one locally to call to get any type information, any type of resources for anyone who wants to make their grounds smoke-free ... people who want to quit smoking," she said.
A spokesman at the state Department of Health, which handled the grant application, would not say why the application was denied. Statewide, applications from programs in nine counties were rejected, he said.
1. In her short tenure as New York's junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand has been something of a political kickball, as Stephen Rodrick notes in his profile of her ("The Reintroduction of Kirsten Gillibrand," June 15-22). That only continued in the nymag.com comments section, where antagonists antagonized and supporters supported, if a little more tepidly. Readers expressed their doubts about, among other things, her political sincerity. "It's obvious she's hardworking, diligent, and ambitious," said one critic. "It's equally obvious that she doesn't have much in the way of core values." Not so harsh, but try this: "If you think that her work for Big Tobacco should not count against her, then you probably think that none of the 'Good Germans' should have been found guilty at Nuremberg." The kinder comments tended to be like this: "Long on personality, short on policy, but a person would have to be a fool not to recognize Kirsten Gillibrand as a formidable force in future politics." Some simply thought Gillibrand deserves a break: "The fact is she represented an upstate district that rarely backed a Democrat. She helped turn it blue, and now she's adapting to representing an entire state." Another spoke to her personableness: "Let her opponents dream about notional ads about guns, immigration, and work she did long ago in private practice. She will be working on the No. 1 issue--the economy, stupid--and meeting more voters every weekend, winning the vast majority of them over."
The health department wants to serve up something new at your corner bodega - a fresh slice of blackened lung.
The grisly image is one of several new anti-smoking ads - as big as 3 feet by 3 feet - that new Health Commissioner Thomas Farley wants to post at the cash registers of every store in the city that sells cigarettes.
"You're going to see the grim realities of what it means to smoke," said Assistant Health Commissioner Sarah Perl."You're going to see what a blackened lung looks like. You're going to see what mouth cancer looks like. You're going to see what it looks like when you have throat cancer."
Health officials say the first-in-the-nation plan would counteract the big cigarette ads in bodega windows and at convenience store checkout counters.
The signs would feature stark warnings like "SMOKING KILLS" - translated into different languages - and pictures of smoke-damaged bodies.
"In the same way they see the tobacco industry's imagery, we want them to see our imagery which is the real imagery. You smoke a cigarette you are not going to end up in on a mountaintop in the snow," said Assistant City Health Department Commissioner Sarah Perl.
Health officials say they've already been able to cut city smoking rates by nearly 30 percent through aggressive tactics from implementing the smoking ban in most public spaces to their hard-hitting anti-smoking ad campaigns.
The new signs would include information on how to quit, but they wouldn't be subtle. The smallest sign would be a foot and a half by a foot and a half in size, with the largest being three feet square.
At the Civic Deli, just a few blocks away from the Health Department, shop owners say placing something in front of their register that could be as large as three feet by three feet might be a bit much. It could block off their candy and energy bar displays. They say they are not worried other prominent warnings would be a danger to their business. In fact, they say it could be a good thing.
The Board of Health wants to introduce a new anti-smoking amendment, but they wants the the public's opinion first.
New Yorkers are being called upon to give their opinion in a public hearing on July 30 on a new Health Code amendment that would put graphic anti-smoking warnings wherever tobacco products are sold. The warnings would include images depicting the adverse health effects of smoking and information on how to quit.
The measure, which is expected to be voted on in September, would require tobacco retailers to display these "point-of-sale warnings and cessations messages" wherever tobacco products are displayed and at the point of purchase is made, such as a cash register.
According to the Health Department, these displays will force the customer to see the health effects of smoking and visually contemplate their tobacco purchase. They say the signage also promotes a greater understanding of the toll tobacco takes on the body and encourage current smokers to quit.
"While the tobacco industry spends billions of dollars every year to glamorize smoking, we will show New Yorkers the harsh realities," Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, stated, "These warning signs will help persuade smokers to quit and show children why they shouldn't start smoking."
While the tobacco industry spends billions of dollars every year to glamorize smoking, we will show New Yorkers the harsh realities. These warning signs will help persuade smokers to quit and show children why they shouldn't start smoking.NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, on the Board of Health proposal to put graphic anti-smoking warnings wherever tobacco products are sold.
When President Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act Monday, Dutchess County Health Commissioner Michael Caldwell, M.D., M.P.H., was there. Caldwell, also a lecturer at the New York Medical College School of Health Sciences and Practice, was invited by the White House to attend the signing ceremony, in the Rose Garden.
The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has introduced a new proposal [pdf] that would require the 12,000 or so cigarette retailers in the city to put large antismoking signs at the cash register and where the cigarettes are displayed, the first such regulation in the United States.
"It's really about getting them at the point-of-sale moment," said Sarah B. Perl, the health department’s assistant commissioner for tobacco control.
Cigarette advertising dominates the retail outlets, and the city wants to balance that message. "We want them to also think about the consequences about what it will do to them," Ms. Perl said.
Similar sign requirements have been made in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, she said, but these would be the first with a graphic element. They have found visually displaying gruesome health effects -- like amputations and throat cancer -- have been the most effective way to generate calls from New Yorkers who want to quit.
The images will be rotated so they can stay "fresh, crisp and impactful," said Ms. Perl, who noted people have become inured to the surgeon general's warning on cigarette packs because it has not changed since it has never changed. . . .
"This type of signage which communicates purely factual information about a commercial transaction is legal," she said.