City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's push to raise the city's tobacco age minimum got local business owners riled up at a City Council hearing yesterday, testifying that changing the minimum from 18 to 21 years of age would harm them financially.
The Council has proposed a series of recent anti-smoking bills, including one that would require stores to hide cigarettes from customer view and one that would raise penalties for selling tax-free bootleg tobacco products. But it was the proposal to hike the minimum purchase age that really resonated with bodega and small businesses owners, who argued that such a hike would drive away customers. "These bills do nothing to attack the tsunami of illegal cigarettes out there that you’re only going to add to by taking legal adults and forcing them into the black market," Robert Bookman, a lawyer representing local newsstand operators, testified at the hearing.
Health Commissioner Thomas Farley admitted that tobacco bootleggers do end up taking a financial toll on the city, testifying that unpaid tobacco taxes could cost the city $250 million to $600 million a year. But he maintained that his primary concern was keeping high school kids from smoking, citing that the number of high schoolers who smoked in Needham, Mass—where the tobacco age minimum was jacked up to 21 a few years ago—has decreased from 12.9 percent to 5.5 percent. "Because tobacco use is still a leading cause of death and because it starts almost exclusively in youth and young adults, it is imperative that we do all we can to protect our young people from addiction and death," he told the Council.
Naturally, the hearing had its hyperbolic moments—"What’s next? No display of cookies or pretzels? 21 to buy a bag of potato chips?" Bookman asked the Council—and business owners questioned whether or not they'd be able to survive the age hike. And Audrey Silk, unyielding smokers' advocate and head of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, issued a fiery statement yesterday bashing the Council's proposals, and promising the group would do its best to counter them:
In the weeks to follow, C.L.A.S.H. plans to run ads in publications such as college newspapers and any other medium that draws young adults illustrating this point, with the spotlight placed on the elected officials who find no issue accepting the votes of the 18 to 20 year-old age group - apparently counting them as mature and informed enough to weigh the issues and vote based on those considerations that will shape the future of our city for everyone - but who deem them too immature and uninformed to purchase a legal product. Then in order to control smoking by those younger than 18, this older age group is rewarded for their vote by stripping them of the very adulthood that allowed them to vote for these politicians in the first place. The council members who are proponents argue that those under 18 have access to cigarettes due to situational associations with those in this older age bracket. But government has no place restricting the rights and privileges of adults in order to control the behavior of children. Suddenly revoking the legal choices of one group traditionally defined as adult in order to achieve this is unacceptable. You don’t punish one to influence another. And yet, the message these politicians have for those who help vote them into office is, "Thanks for your vote but don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out."
But the city says they're hoping the hike will keep kids from getting their hands on tobacco products. "If we can cut it off before people are addicted to it, we’re literally preventing a lifetime of struggle and misery," Quinn said yesterday. "When that happens, people will live longer and will live healthier, better lives, and the financial implications of that for the city are enormous." According to the city, nearly 20,000 public high school students smoke cigarettes.
