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The freshly remodeled Gristedes supermarket on 25 University Place has expanded its space, adding new sections for beer, hot food, a salad bar, bakery and organic products, all looking like crowd-pleasers beneath Thanksgiving decorations strung above the aisles.
But cigarettes are no longer on sale here -- seemingly a sign of the times in this upscale Greenwich Village neighborhood near New York University.
"We haven't had them for some time now," said an assistant manager who identified himself only as Thomas. He noted that cigarettes are available at other Gristedes stores in New York (about 20 still carry them), even though he believes the demand is down. The main reason for the decline in tobacco sales, another Gristedes manager said, is that "people know where they can get them elsewhere" for half the price that conventional retailers in New York charge -- upward of $95 per carton, with $4.25 in state and city taxes tacked on.
He was alluding to untaxed tobacco sold on Indian reservations, a subject that has bedeviled convenience-store operators and New York governors from Cuomo to Paterson.
Led by its Greek-born owner and C.E.O., John Catsimatidis, a longtime New York City mayoral wannabe who smokes an occasional cigar, Gristedes Foods Inc. has claimed in protracted litigation that Indian merchants on two Eastern Long Island reservations are luring away New York customers, and even helping to fund organized crime gangs and terrorist groups like Hezbollah with bulk sales, a charge some politicians dismiss as absurd but others solemnly repeat. . . .
Since he cares so much about health, why does he sell any cigarettes at his grocery stores?
"There is such a thing as freedom of choice," the mogul replied. "I lecture my wife, who smokes, and tell her, Why don't you just have one or two instead of more? It's like what the Greek philosophers say: Everything in moderation."
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Philip Morris USA (PM USA) filed lawsuits against ten retailers selling counterfeit versions of the company's Marlboro� brand cigarettes in New York and New Jersey.
"The New York metropolitan area continues to be a lucrative market for counterfeit and contraband cigarette smugglers," said Joe Murillo, vice president and associate general counsel, Altria Client Services, speaking on behalf of PM USA. "High excise taxes, coupled with New York state's lack of effective tax enforcement, only makes the problem worse," added Murillo.
"These lawsuits are the latest in a series of filings by Philip Morris USA aimed at combating the sale of counterfeit cigarettes in New York and New Jersey," said Murillo. Since May 2009, Philip Morris has filed lawsuits against 27 retail locations in New York and New Jersey for selling counterfeit Marlboro� brand cigarettes
In addition to violating many trademark laws, counterfeit cigarettes are almost always sold without the appropriate federal and state excise tax. The counterfeit cigarettes purchased from the retailers named in today's suits bore no tax stamp or a counterfeit tax stamp. As a result, the applicable excise taxes were not paid. . . .
Eastern District of New York
Maria’s Deli Grocery 143-20 101 Avenue, Richmond Hills, NY 11419
Loveras Grocery 996 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225
Southern District of New York
Aloshe Mini Market 1889 Guerlain Street, Bronx, NY 10461
El Barrio Grocery Deli 39 West 183rd Street, Bronx, NY 10453
Fernandez Grocery Corp. 1665 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10029
Philip Morris USA is accusing 10 New York and New Jersey retailers of selling counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes.
The nation's largest tobacco company announced the federal lawsuits against the retailers Thursday.
There seem to be two Dr. Alan Blums.
One is a tweedy academic — the family medicine professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society at the University of Alabama who has devoted his dead-serious career to the prevention of tobacco-induced illnesses.
The other is the self-described “Bart Simpson of the anti-smoking movement” — the alter ago who donned a fake pharmacist’s lab coat Wednesday to help set up “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” an exhibition on tobacco advertising that opens today in the Buffalo Museum of Science. . . .
The approach reflects a lesson learned in 1977 when Blum, then a Miami hospital intern and nascent anti-smoking crusader, lost a contentious radio talk show debate with a tobacco industry spokesman while the host, Larry King, blew smoke in Blum’s face.
Ever since, “I’ve tried to bring some humor and satire to a depressing issue that many people take very seriously,” Blum said. The strategy has included “house calls” to tobacco festivals and “anything else we could do to ridicule the brand names.”
Satirical references abound in “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” which was gleaned from a trove of tobacco advertising and promotional materials that Blum started collecting 15 years ago and now fills 2,500 boxes in his Alabama center.
He started by buying items distributed by cigarette companies that a Connecticut store owner had accumulated over two decades. “He must’ve thought it had collectible value, but it cost more to ship it [to Alabama] than I paid for it,” Blum said.
From the outset his goal was to mount an exhibition that underscored the everyday irony of seeing tobacco products on the shelves of pharmacies that dispense drugs prescribed to combat cancer, heart disease, hypertension and other diseases linked to smoking.
“I wanted to do an over-the-top, walk-through exhibit,” he said, citing the role that drugstores have played in keeping America smoking. “I’m not going after individual pharmacies as much as the chains that own them.” . . .
By touring “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” he said, “you are looking at origins of cancer just as much as you would by looking through a microscope.”
I wanted to do an over-the-top, walk-through exhibit. I’m not going after individual pharmacies as much as the chains that own them.Prof. Alan Blum, on his Buffalo, NY, ad exhibit that explores the role that drugstores have played in keeping America smoking.
Your Cancer and Drug Store: One-stop shopping: prescriptions, cigarettes, urgent care and chemo.Alan Blum's mock-drug store: an exhibition on tobacco advertising that opens today in the Buffalo Museum of Science.
So some apartment buildings are now banning smoking for new tenants. Existing tenants who smoke will be allowed to continue to puff away.
That's not the case with the new East Harlem building at 1510 Lexington Avenue, which will be the city's first completely non-smoking residence, where tenants won't even be allowed to walk outside and light up in the immediate perimeter of the building. Even the construction workers can't light up.
"We feel that you're impacting, in a rental, so many people around you that we would like to offer the public an opportunity to live in a smoke-free environment," said Kinne Yon of Kenbar Management, which runs the building that will house 298 units.
The family-owned company gave CBS 2 a tour of the building, still under construction. The East Harlem development features upscale apartments, with concierge service, a large gym, and gardens. Smoking will not be allowed anywhere on the property.
Photos by Susanna Howe
The tobacco-stained past, on display at Bird in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
In the wake of our recent mayoral election, let’s take a moment to remember New York before Bloomberg cleared the air in bars, clubs and restaurants by banning smoking. Sales of Febreze aren’t the only thing that plummeted in the city: according to the photographer Susanna Howe, no one wants to be pictured smoking anymore. “Even those people who you wouldn't think would be all squeamish about it dash to put the cigarette out when you raise the camera to your face,” she said.
And so she rushed to document her friends and favorite subjects before they quit. “Smokers,” an exhibition and video installation at Bird in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a stylish, funny, even sexy look at the remaining few who aren’t waiting to exhale, such as the artist Phil Frost. Be sure to try something on in the V.I.P. dressing room, where Howe has created a video that goes as well with Margiela as it does with A.P.C.
More landlords are moving to prohibit smoking in their apartment buildings, telling prospective tenants they can be evicted if they light up in them.
This month, the Related Companies will ban smoking at some of its downtown apartment buildings because of health concerns about secondhand smoke, according to company officials.
Smokers who already live in any of these buildings will not be affected, according to Jeff Brodsky, a president of Related, which is a national developer with 17 buildings in Manhattan.
But any new renters must promise not to smoke at home, even if they continue to elsewhere.
Kenbar Management, a local developer, is going a step further. When its new project, 1510 Lexington Avenue, opens in December, smoking will be banned in all 298 units, in addition to private and shared terraces.
And the typical smoker’s refuge — directly outside the building — is also off limits; tenants must agree not to smoke on any of the sidewalks that wrap around the building, which takes up most of a block in East Harlem, according to Kinne Yon, a Kenbar principal.
The trend has predictably divided smokers and nonsmokers in New York. . . .
So far, about 50 public housing agencies have now forbidden smoking, according to Betsy Feigin Befus, a lawyer with the National Multi Housing Council, a landlord trade group that has tracked the efforts.
Other cities, through legislation or by initiatives of developers, have taken similar steps.
One in two cigarettes smoked in Ontario is illegal, robbing provincial and federal coffers of more than $2 billion a year and raising concerns about children gaining easy access to tobacco.
"There's absolutely no doubt that there's an incredible amount of revenue lost both in the province of Ontario and Quebec and to the federal government as well," provincial Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci said in an interview.
A study for the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council found that illegal cigarette purchases in Ontario have climbed to 48.6 per cent, followed by Quebec with 40.1 per cent. . . .
Originating on First Nations reserves, the contraband smokes are readily available in most towns and cities.
"People have to understand the severity of buying, of making ... and what damage it does do," said Bartolucci.
But how do we know? Enter the squad of "butt pickers."
In a separate investigation last month, the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco collected by hand 19,770 cigarette butts near 110 high schools, and discovered 30 per cent were illegal.
The coalition, which was launched by the Canadian Convenience Stores Association, whose members lose an average of $115,000 in sales annually due to illegal cigarettes, analyzed 14,064 butts from 75 Quebec high schools and concluded 45 per cent were contraband.
Because each legal cigarette has a distinctive marking on the filter, investigators are able to pinpoint hot spots for untaxed and unregulated smokes.
Ontario and Quebec represent about 95 per cent of illegal tobacco sales in Canada, and about 33 per cent of cigarettes sold in Canada are contraband, according to the manufacturers' council study. . . .
The major source of that supply is the Akwesasne native reserve that straddles Ontario, Quebec and the State of New York. Ten cigarette manufacturing plants on the U.S. side pump out billions of cigarettes annually.
"We know that perhaps 95 per cent of the contraband in Canada originates in illegal operations located on four First Nations reserves, the most important of which by far is the U.S. side of Akwesasne near Cornwall, Ont. There is also Kahnawake near Montreal, Tyendinaga near Belleville, and Six Nations near Brantford," said Cunningham.
"Because the smugglers are operating on the water with no lights, we've had a guy killed on a Sea-Doo when he hit a boat going north with cigarettes and he was coming south with marijuana. It's crazy," said Sgt. Michael Harvey, spokesman for the RCMP Cornwall detachment.
The water highway between Akwesasne Mohawk territory and Cornwall is the main source of cheap, illegal cigarettes entering Canada.
The cigarettes are turning up from coast to coast, in big cities and small towns alike. As much as 50 per cent of the smoke filling Canadian lungs comes from smuggled cigarettes, according to one study.
As smuggling goes, Akwesasne is in a unique position: the reserve is on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Its territory straddles not only Quebec and Ontario, but also New York state – where the cigarettes are produced.
From her perch overlooking the St. Lawrence River, motel manager Susan Denneny sees and hears the nightly water traffic.
She recalls watching early one August morning as a small armada of open boats unloaded cigarettes into several waiting vans.
"I'm not going to call the cops. I smoke them," says Denneny, who manages the Monte Carlo Motel located on Montreal Rd., which runs along the river.
MOHAWK NATION OF AKWESASNE -- The NYPD has gone on the reservation -- sending its drug czar upstate to try to help cut off a massive pipeline of pot and ecstasy to the city run by Mohawk Indian smugglers on the Canadian border.
"I was astounded at how lenient the border is," said Chief Joseph Resnick, head of the NYPD's narcotics division.
He spoke after a trip six weeks ago to the Akwesasne reservation, which straddles the US-Canadian border and which he said supplies most of the high-potency marijuana and ecstasy sold on city streets.
"Once you cross into the US, you're on the Indian reservation, which is sovereign land. The whole border is the real point of origin. When we bust large numbers of ecstasy and hydroponic pot, most of it comes through there."
The feds say that in the last 10 years, more than $1 billion worth of marijuana has come through the reservation, which stretches five miles along the banks of the St. Lawrence River. . . .
The crossing, featured in last year's Oscar-nominated movie "Frozen River," is also a major route for illegal immigrants as well as huge quantities of untaxed liquor and cigarettes, investigators said. . . .
One self-professed smuggler interviewed by The Post described how easy it was to elude US Border Patrol officers, who oversee the waterways on the US side of the river, and the Mounties' marine patrol on the Canadian side.
"We go at night and run all night. I get on my Jet Ski, put on a helmet and night-vision goggles and just go. The boats we have are way faster than theirs. They can't catch us."
He said he earned about $300,000 in a two-week period last year after delivering a haul of cigarettes, liquor and pot -- and returned with large equipment bags stuffed with stacks of $100 bills, which took all night to count, he said.
"There are about 100 millionaires on the res," . . .
Leaders are proud of their members. Although the Akwesasne reservation suffers from some of the same problems as others -- high unemployment, obesity, alcoholism -- it also has successful industries, including tobacco factories, construction and maple syrup.
State lawmakers at a public hearing heard claims of "lost" tax revenues ranging from tens of millions to billions of dollars from untaxed cigarette sales on Indian reservations.
While none of the witnesses backed up their claims with substantive evidence, the Seneca Nation of Indians presented officials with a three-inch thick document on its treaty rights, legal history, and an economic study by a Harvard economist that pinpointed how - and how much - the nation's tobacco-based economy benefits the state.
The hearing, which was chaired by Sen. Craig Johnson, D-N.Y., was an all day - and sometimes heated - event at Manhattan Community College Oct. 27. The aim was to investigate why the state has failed in its attempts to collect cigarette taxes from reservation cigarette sales to non-Natives.
J.C. Seneca, a Seneca Nation tribal councilor, testifying on behalf of the nation, addressed that question at the beginning of his testimony.
"The answer to that question, put simply, is that your government has no authority to do so,
Redford recently spoke about the products at a Marblehead Board of Health meeting, unloading for the board a bag of such products that she's collected throughout the year. Her presentation left most board members in disbelief.
"Are we the only ones who don't know about this stuff?" asked a bewildered Helaine Hazlett, the board's chairman.
Take a walk into the 7-11 store in Marblehead, and here is what you will find: "grinders" (small metal contraptions that are used to grind up tobacco or drugs), pipes, hookah pipes for smoking specially made flavored tobacco, flavored chewing tobacco, boxes of blunt wraps (tobacco-based rolling papers), cigarettes that are packaged like Chanel perfume boxes, and smokeless-tobacco gum that comes in a candy-mint-like container. The list goes on.
None of these products are illegal to sell, although in most states, including Massachusetts, to buy any tobacco-related product a person must be 18 or older. In fact, as a local tobacco-control officer, Redford's job is to conduct "compliance checks," . . .
Cigarette companies spent approximately $13 billion on advertising and promotional expenses in 2005 for those tobacco-specific products, nearly double what was spent in 1998, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of that money, Redford says advertisers are more often targeting women and teens.
In 2008, tobacco company Philip Morris USA unrolled its sleek "purse pack" cigarette packaging containing ultra-slim cigarettes; the packaging is made to look as if it is a cosmetics case.
Seneca President Barry E. Snyder Sr. will travel to Washington, D.C. to participate in a first-of-its-kind national Indian nations conference to be staged by President Barack Obama. The all-day conference will take place today.
"During his 2008 presidential campaign Obama promised to go beyond a government-to-government relationship with Native Americans and create a nation-to-nation relationship. This conference indicates he is interested in giving nations a true voice," President Snyder said. "I look forward to taking part in this critical dialogue."
In October 2008, Obama pledged, if elected, he would appoint an American Indian policy advisor to his senior White House staff and would host an annual tribal leadership conference. . . .
In recent weeks, the Seneca Nation has made a strong stance against renewed efforts by some New York State elected officials to collect taxes on tribal tobacco sales. The Senecas have reiterated their position that long-standing federal treaties prohibit states and other governments from taxing Indian nations. The Senecas are also looking for federal assistance to overturn the Kempthorne policy which prohibits off-reservation gaming.
The New York State Senate hearing on the state’s non-collection of taxes on cigarettes sold to non-Native Americans on Indian Reservations brought representatives from Indian nations from all over New York State into a highly charged arena at the Borough of Manhattan Community College on Tuesday.
The hearing was chaired by state Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington) and had several other senators on the committee in attendance throughout the day. Though the hearing was scheduled to end at 2:30 p.m., the full slate of witnesses and complexity of the testimony being given extended to just after 4:30 p.m., with only two brief breaks in between.
Sen. Craig Johnson (D-Port Washington), chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Investigations and Government Operations, will be leading the hearing at Manhattan Community College.
Johnson had to call for order on a couple of occasions during heated exchanges between Sen. Martin Golden (R-Brooklyn) and JC Seneca of the Seneca Nation of Indians that prompted mocking rebukes from Indians in the auditorium. Golden implored the Seneca nation to help New York State given the $4 billion budget deficit the state is facing claiming that New York State will soon be in the same position as California and issuing IOU’s to contractors, vendors and employees. This was met with calls from the crowd, many of whom were yelling out “That’s not our problem” and taunting the senator as he walked out midway through the proceedings.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed legislation on Wednesday to prohibit the sale of most forms of flavored tobacco products in New York City. The new law is more extensive than the federal Food and Drug Administration's ban on candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes, which took effect last month.
The City Council approved the bill on Oct. 14. The legislation covers "chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb or spice flavors," but exempts "tobacco, menthol, mint or wintergreen flavors."
The city ban includes cigars and smokeless tobacco, while the federal ban is limited to cigarettes. That ban prohibits the sale of cigarettes with "an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee."