From: SMOKEFREE@compuserve.com
Date: Thu, 10/02/08
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New graphic picture warnings on cigarette packs in United Kingdom
CNN Video
October 1, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/10/01/shubert.uk.cigarette.warn
ing.cnn
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No smoking at public places all over the country from today
By Aarti Dhar
The Hindu (India)
October 2, 2008
http://www.hindu.com/2008/10/02/stories/2008100259430100.htm
NEW DELHI: The much talked about ban on smoking at public places all over
the country comes into effect from today. Violation of the ban, imposed
under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of
Advertisement and regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and
Distribution) Act, 2003, will attract a fine of up to Rs.200.
Smoking will be prohibited at all places to which the public has access,
including auditoriums, health institutions, government buildings,
restaurants, courts, public conveyances, public transport, stadiums,
railway stations, bus stops, workplaces, shopping malls, refreshment rooms,
discotheques, pubs and airport lounges. The ban will not cover open spaces.
Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has welcomed the Supreme Court
order declining to stay the Centres notification prohibiting smoking. He
described the ban as a major step towards providing a smoke-free atmosphere
and protecting non-smokers from passive smoking.
(excerpt)
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New Hampshire ups tax on cigarettes
Associated Press
Boston Herald
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
http://hawk.heraldinteractive.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid
=1122622
CONCORD, N.H. - New Hampshires cigarette tax rose 25 cents to $1.33 a pack
at midnight.
(excerpt)
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Suits Claim Wide Reach of Cigarettes From Tribes
By Stephanie Saul
New York Times
October 2, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/nyregion/02smoke.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
He emerged from the No. 2 subway at 125th Street wearing a bright orange
shirt and aviator sunglasses, with a small backpack concealing his stock in
trade - tax-free Newport cigarettes.
Like a Yankee Stadium hawker, but in voice closer to a stage whisper, he
kept repeating his pitch: "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs."
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.
Paco will not reveal his last name or the source of his Newports, the
menthol brand widely popular in urban communities. But legal authorities
say the trail of the $5 men leads to American Indian reservations in New
York State, a path they contend is smoothed by the tacit cooperation of
some cigarette makers and distributors.
In New York City, where state and city excise taxes total $4.25 a pack,
often pushing the retail price above $9, tax-free cigarettes from the
reservations fuel a particularly active underground tobacco economy, law
enforcement officials say.
Combined, the city and state are losing more than $1 billion a year in tax
revenue as a result of bootleg cigarettes distributed through New Yorks
reservations, Mayor Michael R. Bloombergs office said on Monday. The losses
to the city alone would pay the annual salaries and benefits for more than
3,000 schoolteachers, the mayors office said.
With the financial crisis placing pressure on the citys 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.
Under federal and state law, the state has no right to assess taxes as long
as the cigarettes are for the use of Native American inhabitants. But fewer
than 20,000 Indians live on reservations in New York. And last year more
than 30 million cartons - six billion cigarettes with a retail value of
nearly $2 billion - were sold on the Indian lands.
According to the State Department of Taxation and Finance, those cigarettes
amounted to nearly one-third of all the cigarettes sold in the state of New
York, where cigarette excise taxes are the highest in the nation.
The bulk of wholesale shipments to New York reservations last year went to
two tribes - the Poospatucks, on Long Island, and the Senecas of western
New York.
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, Justins 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. "Thats
just a sign on a tree," the woman yelled.
Law enforcement authorities say New York Indians also operate five of the
Internets top 10 Web sites that sell cheap cigarettes. And they say
reservations are the primary sources of cigarettes for smuggling rings that
place counterfeit tax stamps on cigarettes and sell them in retail stores
as if taxes had been paid.
Many states have entered agreements with Indian tribes that either
establish quota systems for cigarette shipments or provide for collecting
taxes on off-reservation sales. But ever since a 1997 Seneca protest
briefly shut down the New York Thruway, it has been state policy not to
curb Indian cigarette sales in New York. Since that policy, known as
forbearance, went into effect, wholesale shipments of cigarettes to New
York reservations have soared.
The New York State Legislature recently passed a bill that would resume
enforcement of cigarette taxes on the reservations. The bill is awaiting
the signature or veto of Gov. David A. Paterson, who has not indicated
which way he is leaning and has said he wants to negotiate with the tribes.
Antismoking advocates say the issue goes beyond lost tax revenue. Dr. Donna
Shelley, a New York University professor in public health who has studied
the $5 men, says the bootlegging of cheap cigarettes to low-income
neighborhoods - where rates of smoking and smoking-related diseases have
been high historically - "undermines the smokers ability to quit and their
motivation to quit."
Most cigarette makers, which ship to wholesalers and not directly to the
tribes, generally disavow any responsibility for the bootleg trade. But
experts say that New Yorks Indian tobacco trade is a boon to cigarette
companies and that they have little incentive to limit supply to tribes.
"Theres 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 industrys bottom line."
Lorillard Tobacco Company, maker of Newports, derives more than 5 percent
of its national volume from cigarettes that end up on New York Indian
reservations, according to figures released by the state. Records show that
the reservations received more than 10 million cartons of Lorillard
cigarettes - mainly Newports - last year, more than from any other
manufacturer.
(excerpt)
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