Posted on 07/02/2010 2:58:33 PM PDT by STARWISE
The ruling temporarily puts on hold the new law that prohibits shipping cigarettes through the U.S. Postal Service. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court refuses to consider a tobacco racketeering appeals.
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Federal District Judge Richard Arcara temporarily ordered a new law that disallows cigarettes to be shipped via the mail to be placed on hold, the Associated Press reports.
A Seneca Indian Nation tobacco business owner asked for the restraining order to stop the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act (PACT Act) to take effect yesterday. A July 7 hearing has been scheduled to hear the case.
“We are very disappointed in the ruling and reviewing all possibilities for a legal response. NACS was a strong proponent for passage of the PACT Act and worked for years to obtain its enactment,” said Lyle Beckwith, NACS senior vice president of government relations. “We will not stop fighting.”
The Senecas contend that the act will harm its multi-million dollar tobacco industry and cut 3,000 jobs. The tribe estimates that member businesses sell four out of each five cigarette packs via mail order.
“It’s a major impact, a major obstacle we’re going to have to find a way to overcome,” said J.C. Seneca, a tribe counselor.
Tobacco companies praised the act for helping to stop customers from not paying state taxes, from which Native American businesses are exempt. But Indians see the new law as against tribal sovereignty and a way for tobacco companies to gobble up lost market share.
Cigarette mail orders accounted for $30 million to $40 million in annual revenue for the U.S. Postal Service, said spokeswoman Karen Mazurkiewicz.
Other delivery companies, including DHL, FedEx and UPS, do not ship cigarettes under arrangements with state attorneys general designed to keep tobacco out of the hands of minors.
In other tobacco news, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to look at a ruling that said tobacco companies broke racketeering laws. The court refused to hear appeals by the government and the tobacco industry, which wanted to have lower-court decisions reversed.
The government filed an appeal against cigarette manufacturers trying to collect up to $280 billion from past tobacco profits and an additional $14 billion for a national anti-smoking campaign.
Excerpt:
Sen. John McCain burnished his reformist image two years ago by investigating lobbyists who took advantage of Indian tribes. But now, tribes are throwing their financial weight behind his rival, Barack Obama, donating more than $1 million to support the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign.
For his part, Sen. McCain has refused to take contributions from Indian tribes since 2006, when he was chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. The Republican presidential nominee maintains the tribes have better uses for their money, given the poverty of some reservations.
American Indian support for Sen. Obama may help swing some traditionally Republican states toward the Democrat.
American Indian support for Sen. Obama may help swing some traditionally Republican states toward the Democrat.
Many of the tribes that have given the most to help Sen. Obama are rich with gambling revenue. They've used a loophole in campaign-finance law that allows one tribe to donate more than $200,000, unlike corporations or trade groups, which can't give any money.
The Seneca Nation of New York, which operates casinos upstate, gave $213,000 to Sen. Obama's committees, according to campaign-finance data compiled by CQ MoneyLine. Three other tribes have each given more than $100,000 to his campaign or to party coffers he is using to get out the vote: the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and two California tribes, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the Viejas Band.
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Richard J. Arcara is a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of New York. He joined the court in 1988 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan. serving as the court's lead judicial administrative officer in conjunction with the clerk of court on the court's day to day operations.
Early life and Education
Arcara graduated from St. Bonaventure with his Bachelor's Degree in 1962 and graduated from Villanova Law with his J.D. Degree in 1965. Arcara also served as a U.S. Army Captain in the Military Police Corps from 1966-1967
I hate the Indian casinos. They don’t get a dime from me.
Good to see that the good judge saved the flow of cash from Nicotine Junkies to our Native Americans.
All States depend so heavily on cigarette taxes -as evidenced by the discrimination against smokers looking for a price deal and distributors looking for customers.
Could you imagine the uproar if there were interstate mailing prohibitions on Pet Meds and diabetic products?
I find tobacco use discusting and low class. But I’ll fight to my last breath to allow adults to chose to use it in a free America.
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live.. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.
This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." Thomas Jefferson
Except it was the young'uns that wanted Bamcare.
Thanks for the TJ Quote on this holiday weekend. However, I’m not sure what his quote has to do with my support for this judge’s ruling which will take money away from the tyrannical state and federal governments and let it go to the hard working Native Americans who earned thats money.
Sure sure. Your post wasn’t sarcasm.
We need a heavy tax on alchol.
“Could you imagine the uproar if there were interstate mailing prohibitions on Pet Meds and diabetic products?”
Exactly right, cigarettes are a legal product, but they are trying single them out, using the harmful effects of tobacco as a ruse. The purpose of the law is for taxation enforcement alone. The very name of the law illustrates the underhanded tactic they are using, talking about “cigarette trafficking”. Does anyone talk about “soft drink trafficking” or “gasoline trafficking”? Why are cigarettes, legal in all 50 states, the only legal product tarred by association with this term?
As long as it’s a legal product, then interstate commerce in it surely must be legal, so there can be no such thing as “trafficking” in cigarettes.
correction; alcohol
No Sarcasm at all.
I simply advocate the judge’s decision to permit all that money flow directly from smokers to hard working Americans.
I’ve read your posts before.
ML/NJ
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