1. New York City Mayor Bloomberg seeks to ban tobacco use in NYC, so the city raises taxes sky-high on cigarettes to make cigarettes scarce.
2. Scarcity creates a black market for cigarettes. Street peddlers step in to fill the gap and avoid taxation.
3. Police commission vows to 'crack down' on unlicensed peddlers of untaxed cigarettes, so they send roving undercover patrols of NYPD policemen around busting scofflaws.
4. Of course, the police manage to asphyxiate a street peddler in the course of lawful arrest. The NYC grand jury chooses not to indict, so a NYC anarchist strikes back against perceived racism by murdering two NYPD patrolmen before committing suicide.
5. Ultimately, New York City settles the case for $5.9 million paid to the police victim's relatives rather than the $75 million they sought -- reasoning to "save taxpayers of New York City the expense of a drawn-out trial" (unquote) that they'd almost certainly lose.
No word from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg on whether the taxes outweighed the benefits of one citizen and two policemen killed in exchange for a trying to make tobacco scarce.
Today, Bloomberg goes around the entire nation trying to make firearms scarce. Because, golly, what with NYC policemen getting murdered by guns and all. His brilliant ideas for NYC is likewise good for the nation, he reasons.
You summed it up nicely.
I for one am deliriously happy that NYC has to ‘cough” out $6 million as a result of its idiotic taxing of single cigs.
I’d like to know how much in taxes has gone in the NYC ‘coffers’ as a result of its high cigarette taxes which just created the black market that killed Garner.