http://www.tobacco.org/newsfeed/state/NY.rss Latest top tobacco news headlines en-us http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/big-tobaccos-spin-on-womens-liberation/?scp=5-b&sq=cigarette&st=nyt http://tobacco.org/news/272226.html Why do nearly one-fifth of women in America smoke? The answer goes back to an event almost 80 years ago on Fifth Avenue, which is often regarded as one of the most successful P.R. stunts in American history. This sometimes overlooked piece of history has surfaced again because of an exhibit of historic cigarette ads at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business branch at 34th Street and Madison Avenue. The show, "Not a Cough in a Carload: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking," which opened this week, was curated by a doctor, Robert J. Jackler, whose mother, a smoker, died of lung cancer. . . . Recognizing that women were still riding high on the suffrage movement, Mr. Bernays used the equality angle as the basis for his new campaign. He convinced a number of genteel women, including his own secretary, to march in the 1929 Easter Day parade down Fifth Avenue and light up cigarettes in a defiant show of their liberation. One woman who lit a Lucky Strike told the reporter from the New York Evening World that she “first got the idea for this campaign when a man on the street asked her to extinguish her cigarette because it embarrassed him. ‘I talked it over with my friends, and we decided it was high time something was done about the situation.’” . . . The Times published an article the next day on the Easter Parade, with headline saying in part, "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'" “Within a year, it became acceptable for woman to smoke outside," Dr. Jackler said. . . . Marketing cigarettes for women continued with the introduction of Virginia Slims in 1968, which for decades used the theme “You’ve come a long way, baby” as an allusion to the feminist movement. “There is a bump in women’s smoking in the 1970s," Dr. Jackler said. That increase has shown up now, he added, as more cases of "lung cancer and emphysema, because they started smoking in the '70s because of the Virginia Slim ads." . . . But last year, R. J. Reynolds introduced Camel No. 9s New York Times Blogs cityroom@nytimes.com (Jennifer 8. Lee) Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2007/10/08/segments/86776 http://tobacco.org/news/272225.html Karen Brooks Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Andrew Martin, business reporter for the New York Times talk about why the tobacco company is pulling its money from New York arts groups. WNYC Radio Mon, 08 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nypost.com/seven/10052008/news/regionalnews/li_tribe_s_defiant_cig__nal_132233.htm http://tobacco.org/news/272224.html The Poospatuck Indian reservation is a little more than 60 miles outside the city, the entrance road tucked off a suburban side street in Mastic, LI. Upon entering, visitors see painted wooden signs advertising cheap cigarettes, then clusters of wooden smoke shops, then surveillance cameras, then residents who hover, take down license-plate numbers, and follow you around, conspicuously, until you leave. There is no such thing as sightseeing. It is not encouraged nor recommended. White buyers drive up to the smoke shops nearest Mastic roads, dart inside, pay about $5 a pack, and scoot back into their cars and right off the reservation; there's no lingering, no conversation. Poospatuck is not the bucolic ecosystem advertised on its Web site, which features a photo of a nuclear Native American family leisurely strolling on unspoiled land. . . . This is the reservation that houses the eight smoke shops Mayor Bloomberg sued last week, claiming that their sales of untaxed tobacco have cost the city and state nearly $1 billion in revenue. It is hard to reconcile that figure with the abject poverty on display. . . . As for charges of smuggling and other criminal activity, Wallace says his reservation is clean. Unprompted, he brings up Rodney Morrison, a former Poospatuck smoke shop owner who has been charged in federal court with selling millions of unstamped smokes illegally and with ordering the killing of a rival Poospatuck seller. Morrison offered $54 million for bond; Wallace suggests drug dealing on the side as the source of all that money, then lets it go, sending his visitors off with a wave and a handshake. And, of course, a car tailing them to the nearest highway. New York Post Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10fri4.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=smoking&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/272195.html Mayor Michael Bloomberg, long a foe of smoking, has taken his opposition to a new territory -- the American Indian shops on Long Island that sell cigarettes to non-Indians. By filing a series of federal lawsuits, the mayor is trying to force Gov. David Paterson to collect sales taxes on those cigarettes. . . . The governor's plan is for the taxes to be negotiated as part of a larger series of discussions on casinos and other issues . . . We believe that Mr. Paterson's approach is the most likely to succeed, but state negotiators should be able to use the mayor's outrage to pressure Indian leaders to negotiate a solution more quickly. Nobody wants statewide protests, but millions of cheap, tax-free cigarettes are bad for New York's health, fiscal and otherwise. New York Times Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=smoking&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/272125.html From the 1920s into the 1950s, cigarette ads featured endorsers as varied as babies, Mickey Mantle, doctors and even Santa Claus. An exhibit of these campaigns is on display at the Science, Industry and Business Library in New York and is also online. . . . Documents from the George Arents Collection on Tobacco from the archives of the Science, Industry and Business Library will also be on display. The exhibit was seen in cities like Boston and San Francisco before arriving in New York. . . . An exhibit that opens on Tuesday in New York presents cigarette ads from the 1920s through the early 1950s in an effort to demonstrate what has changed since then — and what may not have. The exhibit, of hundreds of print ads and television commercials, is titled “Not a Cough in a Carload: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking.” The first part of the title is borrowed from a slogan for Old Gold cigarettes, a brand that subsequently boasted in its ads of being “made by tobacco men, not medicine men.” • The exhibit will be on display through Dec. 26 at Healy Hall at the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library, 188 Madison Avenue, at 34th Street. It can also be viewed online (tobacco.stanford.edu). The exhibit is the brainchild of Dr. Robert K. Jackler of the Stanford School of Medicine, who described himself in an interview as “an accidental tourist in the world of advertising.” More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on October 7, 2008, on page B3 of the New York edition. New York Times Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/nyregion/06diary.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=tobacco&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/272122.html Published: October 5, 2008 EXCERPT Dear Diary: It was one of those saunalike summer nights, and I was on my way home from work. The first subway car I entered had seats but no air-conditioning. Most of us entering the hot car quickly moved to the next one. I was lucky and found a seat. But when I looked up, I noticed someone right over my head carefully pulling out a sheet of rolling paper and some tobacco from a pouch. The man standing to my left watched as the person neatly rolled the cigarette. He and I both smiled at the rider's dexterity. Then we sighed a breath of relief when the jointlike cigarette was done. Not one bit of tobacco had landed anywhere. The rider quickly put the cigarette behind her right ear . . . I felt as if I had met my first urban cowgirl. New York Times diary@nytimes.com (Beth Rosen ) Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://gothamist.com/2008/10/07/historic_cigarette_ad_exhibition_at.php http://tobacco.org/news/272119.html After his mother died from cancer, Dr. Robert Jackler of Stanford University worked through his grief by searching out print tobacco ads from the '20s through the '50s. Appearing in publications like Life and the Saturday Evening Post, the ads featured such cigarette-smoking luminaries as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, and Santa Claus. And of course there were plenty of models hired to pose as doctors and dentists for ads with slogans like, "38,381 Dentists Say, ‘Smoke Viceroys.' They can never stain your teeth." Because if it was only, say, 38,300 dentists, nobody would have bought it. Now Dr. Jackler's vast digitally restored collection is on display through December at a free exhibit called Not a Cough in a Car Load: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking. At turns hilarious and dismaying, the exhibit is open through December 26th at The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library's Healy Hall (188 Madison Avenue). The Gothamist [Blog] reportabuse@gothamist.com (John Del Signore) Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcigs025866227oct02,0,2169565.story http://tobacco.org/news/272048.html It seems like a serious mismatch: the City of New York versus eight smoke shops and their operators on the Poospatuck reservation in Mastic. But we can't say that we blame Mayor Michael Bloomberg for suing to stop what looks like blatant bootlegging of tax-free cigarettes, which costs the city and state a bundle of lost taxes. . . . So it's obvious that most of those cigarettes are finding their way into the hands, and the lungs, of non-Native Americans, who should be paying taxes. The city estimates that it's losing about $195 million a year from these shops, and the state is losing $525 million. Add in sales from other reservations, and the lost taxes are estimated at $1 billion. It's too bad this has to come to a lawsuit, with all the cost and lost time that entails, when the city and state need every dime they can find in this time of declining revenues and tight budgets. Ultimately, as distasteful as it may be to crack down on reservations, Gov. David Paterson will have to figure out a way to enforce the laws and reap for the state and the city hundreds of millions of dollars. Newsday Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nypost.com/seven/10052008/news/regionalnews/sacked_deutsche_whistleblower_sues_132236.htm http://tobacco.org/news/272034.html An elevator operator at the doomed Deutsche Bank building near Ground Zero claimed he was fired for blowing the whistle on rampant safety violations, including smoking on the job - the cause of the tragic blaze that killed two firefighters last year, according to a new lawsuit, The Post has learned. Marshall Greenberg, 38, son of mob associate Harold Greenberg, said that after he allegedly reported the violations to the city Department of Buildings and the Environmental Protection Agency, he was relentlessly harassed by co-workers with anti-Semitic slurs, ordered to keep his mouth shut, and ultimately fired for cooperating with authorities. They even urinated in his hardhat, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week. "I don't look at it as criminally negligent homicide. I look at it as murder," said Greenberg, who worked at the construction site for eight months. . . . Almost immediately after Greenberg was hired in March 2006, he said he noticed workers hired by John Galt Corp. and Bovis Lend Lease to tear down the 9/11-damaged building were smoking and drinking on the job. "They were smoking in front of open gas cans," he told The Post. He said that Galt and Bovis supervisors had a network of lookouts to warn them if inspectors from the DOB, the Environmental Protection Agency or other regulatory agencies came by to inspect the work. New York Post janon.fisher@nypost.com (JANON FISHER) Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/10/05/2008-10-05_mayor_bloomberg_touts_antismoking_plan_i.html http://tobacco.org/news/272032.html BERLIN - Drinking beats smoking, Mayor Bloomberg said today at a beer-soaked street fair in the heart of Germany's capital. After scooping up an anti-smoking award, the mayor bragged that New Yorkers who smoke are now ashamed to huddle outside bars with cigarettes, while non-smokers buy more food and drinks inside. "It turns out that it is economically good for the bar and restaurant business," Bloomberg said. "It's certainly good for everybody except the funeral parlors." The mayor was in Berlin to accept an award from the European Lung Foundation for his anti-smoking crusade. . . . Bloomberg acknowledged that he used to smoke two decades ago and said humiliation helped him kick the habit. "Friends of mine sort of looked down on me. It was embarrassing that I was doing something that can only be described as self-destructive and not very smart," the mayor said. "It's relatively easy to stop, and once you stop, you're going to feel so much superior to those who do smoke that there's instant gratification." . . . He scolded medical professionals who still smoke as setting a horrible example to their patients. "Every doctor who smokes sets an example that undermines the best public health anti-smoking campaign," he said. "He or she sends the message - after all, how bad can smoking really be?" New York Daily News Germany Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.wten.com/Global/story.asp?S=9121491 http://tobacco.org/news/272025.html For years, the State Department of Health has been raising awareness of tobacco ads and how they increase the chance of getting kids to smoke. Now, Price Chopper is changing the way it displays and sells the products. Display cases now have fogged glass. The glass makes tobacco items and advertisements minimally visible. In addition, colorful signs and price lists are being replaced with simple black-and-white ones. WTEN TV ABC Channel 10 Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ats-bc-ny--smokinghabits2ndld-writethrusep30,0,1805499.story http://tobacco.org/news/271983.html A soon-to-be-released report on smoking in New York will say the number of high school students smoking cigarettes has declined more than 2 percent since 2005. The state Department of Health reported in 2005 that about 16.2 percent of high school students statewide smoked cigarettes. In 2007, that dropped to less than 13.8 percent, compared to 20 percent nationwide, according to excerpts from the health department's new report obtained by The Associated Press. AP Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-us-newyorkstate-budget.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=cigarette&st=nyt&oref=slogin http://tobacco.org/news/271971.html Paterson, speaking at an economic summit with state legislative leaders and the state comptroller, said he would not raise taxes. The state already faces a $1.2 billion budget deficit. Asked by Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos if he would hike taxes, Paterson, said, "No." . . . Skelos, who criticized the governor repeatedly for lecturing him, did agree the economic situation was "dire," warned against "job-killing" tax hikes. He said the state must start collecting the billions of dollars of taxes on sales of fuel and cigarettes that Native American stores do not charge. Asked about a lawsuit New York City filed earlier this week to force eight tribal stores on Long Island to collect cigarette taxes, Paterson noted at least four previous governors had failed to resolve this problem. He said he is taking an "omnibus" approach that aims to solve all the outstanding issues, including disputes over casinos. Reuters Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/nyregion/02smoke.html http://tobacco.org/news/271856.html His name is Paco, but on the streets of Harlem he is known simply as a “$5 man,” the nickname for a highly visible network of peddlers who sell bootleg cigarettes. His illegal traffic in Newports — $5 a pack or a single “loosie” cigarette for 50 cents — can bring him $100 or more a day. . . . With the financial crisis placing pressure on the city’s budget, the Bloomberg administration placed blame for most of the lost revenue on the tiny Poospatuck Indian reservation on eastern Long Island. The city filed a civil suit on Monday against eight smoke shops on the reservation. The suit accuses those shops of fostering the illegal trade by “structuring and concealing bulk sales, assisting in the packing of vans destined for New York City and even making their own bulk deliveries off the reservation.” Still pending is a separate civil suit the Bloomberg administration filed in 2006 against seven tobacco wholesalers it accuses of violating federal contraband law by supplying untaxed cigarettes to reservations. . . . The president of the Seneca nation, Maurice A. John Sr., declined to comment through a spokesman. In court papers, the Seneca tribe has argued that sales of untaxed cigarettes to non-Indians for personal consumption are not unlawful. On Tuesday, Harry Wallace, the chief of the Poospatucks, accused the city of politicizing the issue to benefit convenience store owners, who object to competition from tribal sales. “You have a whole host of people who are using this as a political tool to gain favor with an electorate to gain political power,” Mr. Wallace said. Philip Morris USA, whose Marlboro brand is widely bootlegged, has contended in federal court filings that shipments by one wholesaler to the Poospatuck reservation went to addresses amounting to little more than signs on sheds or trees. A reporter who recently visited the Poospatuck reservation saw a sign for Wolf Pack Smoke Shop on a storage shed and a sign, Justin’s Smokes, on a tree outside a residential trailer. An occupant of the trailer ordered the reporter off the property, telling her it was not a cigarette shop. “That’s just a sign on a tree,” the woman yelled. . . . “There’s no question that keeping the Indians selling these enormous quantities of cigarettes benefits the manufacturer,” said Steve Rosenthal, a former New York cigarette distributor and now an industry consultant. A Congressional report in April characterized New York as a safe haven for cigarette smuggling. The report partly blamed the manufacturers and wholesalers that supply tribes, saying that “smuggling actually increases market share and boosts the industry’s bottom line.” New York Times Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT http://www.nypost.com/seven/10012008/news/regionalnews/ny_kids_spurn_ciggies_131546.htm http://tobacco.org/news/271817.html A soon-to-be-released report on smoking in New York will say the number of high-school students smoking cigarettes has declined more than 2 percent since 2005. The state Department of Health reported in 2005 that about 16.2 percent of high school students statewide smoked cigarettes. In 2007, that dropped to less than 13.8 percent, compared to 20 percent nationwide, according to excerpts from the health department's new report. "New York's youth are using tobacco at a lower rate than youth in most other states, and is currently ranked fifth lowest in youth who use tobacco," said Karmen Hanson, a policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "New York's tobacco-cessation and -prevention programs are apparently working." Russ Sciandra, the director of the Center for a Tobacco Free New York, attributes the improvement to the state's various programs and advertisements to discourage tobacco use. . . . The 2007 data will be presented to the Tobacco Control Advisory Board tomorrow. The "youth-risk behavior" survey gathered information from 13,439 youths between February and May 2007. AP Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT