Retailers critical of council’s ban on cigarette discounts
The ban on cigarettes sales to anyone under the age of 21 isn’t the only anti-smoking measure the City Council approved on Wednesday. Buried deep within most of the news stories was the fact that the council also voted for a bill that sets a minimum price of $10.50 a pack for cigarettes and prohibits retailers from offering discounts on tobacco products.
CNN reported that the bill, which the council called “Sensible Tobacco Enforcement,” also increases the penalties for retailers who evade tobacco taxes.
“More than 80 percent of adult smokers in NYC start smoking before age 21, so raising the sales age to 21 will protect teens and may prevent many people from ever starting to smoke,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, said in a statement. “The Sensible Tobacco Enforcement law will prohibit discounting and crack down on illegal untaxed cigarette sales, both of which attract young people to smoking. These two laws will protect our young people from the marketing of tobacco and represent historic advances in our fight against New York City’s leading killer.”