Judge: No Bail For "Dangerous" NY Cigarette Dealer

Calling him "a cunning individual with dangerous proclivities," a judge on Thursday refused to grant bail to an Indian reservation smoke shop proprietor who made a fortune supplying untaxed cigarettes to the black market.

U.S. District Judge Denis R. Hurley said in his ruling that he believed Rodney Morrison, one of the state's biggest dealers in tax-free tobacco, was a liar and a killer, despite his acquittal on murder charges in a federal racketeering case last year.

Verdict notwithstanding, Hurley said, the evidence showed that Morrison had protected his cigarette business on Long Island's Poospatuck Indian Reservation by sending henchmen to attack competitors.

Long Island's Poospatuck Indian Reservation

Isn't this the place with the 'highest rate of smoking' in the entire world? On sales versus a per capita basis of its 279 full time inhabitants, each was smoking 19,000 coffin nails ...

PER DAY!

Native American Sovereignty at its finest. No wonder the local authorities went after them, given that the the NYC combined tax is a mere $4.25 per PACK or $0.21+ per stick.

I do SINCERELY sympathize with the addicts and THANK GOD that I never got started. I do admire the grim irony though that it was the Native Americans who introduced the White Man to Tobacco and now having suffered much at the hands of the Whites, it is a bit of revenge (except that it kills the Indians too.

... they are only LIGHTING 19,000 cigarettes each day ...

If that is the case, we might have an explanation for Global Warming, especially if Algore's favorite scientist, James Hansen, had a satellite focused near there. It would probably show up like a volcano!

However even with your ingenious idea, the math just doesn't add up. Assume all residents are adult smokers, assume they only spend 6 hours of the day eating sleeping and other non-smoking activities, and that gives a consumption rate of 1,056/hour or 1 cancer stick every 3.2 seconds not counting the time to breath or light and extinguish the same. Not even RJR's best engineers have been able to develop a machine capable of that feat.

On a side note, consider the probable effect such a regime would have on the average resident of this reservation. S/he would have a vastly over-developed right/left arm and hand, ditto for the chest to support the ability to inhale/exhale every 3 seconds through a cigarette, a permanent stoop towards the location of the ashtray, an enormous fundamental from sitting, red-eyes from all of the smoke ... In other words, someone I would have nightmares about ever meeting in a smoky room, which is the only place to meet one of them. Speaking to that as well, imagine a fire marshal or EPA inspector visiting that reservation ..., on the other hand, lets not!

Ah yea another one that uses the term "addict" for smokers...It only took the lefty's and anti-smoking Nazi's a couple of years to pound that phrase into the soft headed...What used to be called just a weak will is now an addict...Lets pretend your at a party...some addicts are shooting heroine, some are puffing marijuana, some are dead drunk, some are high on crack or cocaine. Some of those addicts are just smoking a cigarette....Now the question, which one will you let drive you home. (you don't have a license so cannot legally drive) Which "addict" is a danger to everyone. And please answer the question as stated, I find addict related to smokers dumb..

When a person mentions an addict the picture that comes to mind is a poor soul on hard narcotics, crack,cocaine, meth, and committing burglary, or murder to get money for their habit...Us poor smokers just want the self righteous to leave us the hell along.

I am sorry but I lost my mother, just 2 years ago, to lung cancer because she was ADDICTED to smoking. Merriam-Webster definition: To devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively. I watched her try to stop over and over, again and again, so I am sorry, to me and many others, this is an addiction. After watching her develop COPD and lose the ability to survive without supplemental oxygen, I saw the results and I sincerely hope and pray you are one of the lucky ones who avoid this.

In your example the answer is, of course, the cigarette smoker because their addiction does not affect their motor and situational skills. I recognize your sensitivity but don't lump me for the use of that single word in with those who are the anti-smoking nazis. I have enough of my own addiction (food) that I too am in the gunsights of the 'self-righteous'!

I am sorry that you lost your mother to lung cancer. It is a horrible disease. But I have to remind you that people die of lung cancer, have asthma, and other related breathing disorders that never smoked cigarettes...There seems to be a genetic influence to lung cancer and if you have that it increases your changes of developing it...My father smoked until 50 when he developed asthma..He would do a little chew now and then...He passed away at 85 from acute leukemia..Even thought lung cancer did not take his life, to those that do statistics he would be listed as death by cigarettes because he once smoked...

I have been smoking since I was 13 and am now 70, I am not bragging just saying that I have no breathing problems as of yet...No asthma, no COPD, no lung cancer.

To blame everything on smoking is not being honest. I truly am sorry for your loss, and I know some cannot stop without help or do not really want to stop...

If I had a family history of lung cancer, I would not smoke. My family history is diabetes. On my mother side an uncle, a grandfather now 2 of my son's and one of my niece's...genetics determines a lot...My mother in law was also a diabetic...Another family problem is G I cancers/ my father also had colon cancer, his father died of stomach cancer and I have one son that has had pre cancer polyps in his colon...I have chronic GI problems...

I understand your feelings on this, and you have a good reason to hate smoking. To me, smoking nazi's are the ones that write the laws, stick their nose in the air at the mention of smoking, etc...They won't outlaw it as the taxes pay for a lot of their programs...A gov't without taxes on everything in the world does not exist...Outlaw the damn things if they are as bad as some think they are..

The smoking nazi's would if they didn't need the money. But then again some of them realize that outlawing something some people don't like does not work. The constitutional ban on alcoholic drinks did not work out so well and had to be constitutional rescinded..

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