(Seems the mayor, has a double standard, when it comes to smoking. This is the same Mayor, which advocated, the hike in the city cigarette tax, to "discourage smoking".)
Bloomberg must still be smoking dope if he thinks anyone buys his nonsense that hiking the cigarette tax is a public health measure. The theory that people, especially "the children", stop smoking because of price increases has been discredited for quite some time. When California raised taxes a few years ago its smoking rate supposedly went down. For reasons never explained by anti-tobacco, but obvious to even a casual observer of human nature, the smoking rates in neighboring -- and low tax -- Nevada miraculously rose at just the same time. No one will quit in New York City but many will buy out of state or off the internet.
Even the bozos running New York don't believe people will quit. They estimate the new tax will bring in $111-million in the coming fiscal year. For the next fiscal year they estimate the tax will enrich the city coffers by $116-million. If masses of people are going to quit, as the mayor pretends, why would the taxes collected continue to grow?
RINO Mayor BloombergYOU KNOW he's really a democrat - don't you?
He ONLY became a Repub to run for mayor (the pipeline is too back-up on the DemocRat side to get in edgewise) ...