Posted on 11/24/2002 9:20:48 AM PST by SheLion
Douglas Smith, a chain-smoking mail-order entrepreneur from the coal mining town of Ashland, Ky., wants to share his bad habit. The idea struck last winter, when word of Mayor Bloomberg's proposed cigarette tax increase made the local news.
"I don't know why it aggravated me so much," said Mr. Smith, who smokes three cartons a week. "I'm not even from New York and it makes me angry. It really drives me nuts."
After a few cigarettes, a light bulb went on. "There's an opportunity for people to go in there and make literally millions of dollars," said Mr. Smith, a former landfill operator. With the tax in place, New Yorkers now pay about $7 a pack.
Two months ago, Mr. Smith and a neighbor started El Diablo's Tobacco Shack to sell cheaper cigarettes to New Yorkers. Kentucky has the second-lowest cigarette tax in the country, at 3 cents a pack. Virginia, at 2.5 cents, is the lowest, while New York City is the highest with a combined state and city tax of $3.
Interstate tobacco retailers have grown in recent years. Federal law requires mail-order cigarette customers to pay tax in their own states, but the law is rarely enforced.
El Diablo's is probably alone among the interstate tobacco retailers in marketing only to New York City. Working with a direct-mail company, El Diablo's has started to blanket the city with red-and-white fliers, asking "fellow New Yorkers" if they are tired of paying high prices for cigarettes. Of the 250,000 pieces mailed so far, 10,000 have replied yes, Mr. Smith said.
Newport menthols, traditionally marketed to blacks and Latinos, are the most popular. People in the South Bronx and eastern Brooklyn have been big buyers.
"We just figured that's where the working-class people are," Mr. Smith said. "Most of your smokers are people who can't afford the extra taxes." To that end, El Diablo's accepts payments not only by credit card, but also by personal check and even c.o.d. These easy-payment options don't sit well with some observers.
"I've never heard of this before," said Eric Lindblom, a policy analyst for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington advocacy group. "It's preying on poor people." Like Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Lindblom voices hope that the higher taxes will be an incentive for people to quit.
Mr. Smith sees it differently. "Our plan is to make sure everybody has access," he said. "People have the right to smoke. I'm waiting for Bloomberg to quit drinking, so he'll start calling for prohibition."
Fri Nov 22
Mayor Bloomberg's approval rating is drying up faster than the city's cash flow, a new poll found yesterday.
Twice as many voters disapprove of his job performance now as did in July.
Overall, the poll found 41% of voters like the job he is doing as mayor, while 46% give him a thumbs-down.
That's double the 23% of voters who rated Bloomberg negatively in July - and the first time his popularity has dipped below the halfway mark since he reached City Hall in January.
"The honeymoon is over," declared Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "After a big welcome, Mayor Bloomberg rates only a standoff in job approval."
It's not hard to pinpoint why: The mayor's bid to raise property taxes 25% to help close a yawning budget gap is getting bad reviews from voters - who favor spending cuts by a 2-to-1 majority.
Tough economic times almost always mean tough poll numbers for chief executives, and Bloomberg is no exception.
In addition to raising taxes, he has proposed cutting $1.8 billion in city services over the next 20 months, a hit list that includes closing firehouses, shutting 32 senior centers and trimming 2,000 cops from the NYPD.
But only 34% of voters approve of his handling of the city's budget.
That's a bleak number for the former media mogul, who campaigned on the pledge that his business know-how would help to restore the city to fiscal health.
Bloomberg, whose popularity had been slowly waning from a peak of 65% in February, tried to shrug off the precipitous drop in his numbers yesterday.
"You cannot run the city to try to improve your position in polls," he told reporters in the Bronx. "Nobody should expect, when you are facing very tough times and have to make the hard decisions, that the public ... will say, 'Hey, great!'"
"I think, to some extent," Bloomberg added, "those are referendums on 'I don't want my taxes raised.'"
Little comfort
Asked whether he felt unappreciated, given the always tough task of cutting the city's budget, the mayor quipped, "After raising my two daughters, nothing could make me feel unappreciated."
But the survey offered Bloomberg little solace.
Although 60% of voters agree with him that the city's fiscal plight is "very serious," only 44% said they were "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with the direction the city is headed - the lowest level since Quinnipiac began asking that question in November 1996.
Bloomberg's popularity, while traditionally strong across ethnic groups, has waned considerably among blacks and Hispanics.
Only 46% said they'd be willing to pay more income taxes if the state approved his long-shot plan to tax commuters, compared with 47% who said they would not.
Even on improving city schools, which Bloomberg has cast as his priority, voters split 40%-to-41% on his handling of the job.
The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,004 registered city voters over the last week. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
"This is a reflection of reality," Carroll said of the survey. "And the reality is he has big budget problems." Originally published on November 22, 2002
Can't beat THAT with a stick, Gabz! A pack of cigarettes is only WORTH .35 cents, anyway!
And government taxing the habits of poor people is not???
Government operated gambline (lottery) is not????
Warrentless no knock drug raids by government is not???
Helping them be lazy and dependent thru welfare is not???
This guy is an idiot.
I just love this name. It reeks of defiance!
We are working hard to get the word out, billhilly! There are 55 million American smokers. And there is a handful of us in here. We are trying very hard to let people know who choose to smoke, that there is a better alternative then feeding the cash cow of their local Governments.
and
I think we got, at least, a start on that in Missouri this election season.
A tobacco tax was voted down.
The group going for the tax tried to pull an end around and there were a lot of people that didn't even know the initiative was still going to be voted on until about a month beforehand.
Myself and a couple of others put out newsletters and flyers, especially in the smoke shops.
I think we made a difference.
That's a good laugh, alright! HE'S a good laugh.
I sure would like to know where he came up with the idea that New Yorkers are sheeple and will just dish out the money! He's smoking something good, or having a lot of good dreams that do not survive "The Get Real Test.
He IS an idiot, Bob! It was a sad day when Rudy put THIS guy up for Mayor! BlommingIdiot was an Independent and switched over so he could "fill Rudy's shoes?" This is just the beginning of the downfall of New York City. How long does he have in office, btw?
I bow before you! But I think it's too late. All the Governors across the United States were told to tax the smoker! FIX your budgets! BALANCE your budgets! TAX the smokers, and tell them it's for their own good!
When your too spineless to cut spending, stick it to the smokers, and tell them it's for their own good.
Small wonder, New York is back where it was 10 years ago, business moving out, unemployment increased sharply, taxes up........ whats to like about this guy.
I'm sure you made a difference, Joe! This was a nice win for you this year. Just be on your toes.......next year is another year. 
But what are we to do? They lie boldface to us, we give them our vote, then when they are in the State House with their side-kicks, they stick it to us. I don't know what else to do here. They say VOTE! WE DO VOTE! Then you see what happens after they get into office.........
Not very much, I am afraid. Mike is a very dangerous man.
He recently returned from a trip to Turkey and other parts. (What he was doing over there is beyond me), but he was sitting around real close with all those Turks smoking, and he didn't say jack!
Circling Their Stogies Against Mayor
By CLYDE HABERMAN – 20 September 2002
MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG, scourge of the smoking class, has journeyed to the heart of enemy territory. The mayor was in Athens yesterday. After spending more time there today, he heads for Istanbul.
In no way is this meant to slight Greeks or Turks. But if you're looking for cities where people smoke more than wet branches set on fire, you can hardly beat Athens or, even better, Istanbul. Take it from one who spent a good deal of time in Turkey. Entering almost any public building there is like stepping into a pack of Gauloises.
As New Yorkers know, Mr. Bloomberg is a reformed smoker who approaches the subject of evil tobacco with the fervor of a religious convert determined that everyone share his enlightenment. But he sat unflinchingly among smokers in Athens yesterday, and he is unlikely to rebuke the people of Istanbul for their wicked ways. They want to smoke? Well, as the old song goes, that's nobody's business but the Turks'.
Back home, some wish that the mayor would treat New Yorkers the same way. He has become, for smokers and even many nonsmokers, equivalent to Hickey, the preachy salesman in "The Iceman Cometh" who takes the life out of the booze at Harry Hope's saloon.
Mr. Bloomberg's campaign to outlaw smoking in all bars and restaurants drew a band of dissenters the other day to Gallagher's Steak House, on West 52nd Street. Call it the Charge of the Light 'Em Up Brigade. Two dozen people, mainly cigar-smoking men, puffed while they huffed about a crusade that they consider unnecessary, given existing smoking laws that seem to work fine. To them, the proposed ban is zealotry run amok.
"What's to say against them?" the boxing commentator Bert Sugar said of cigars. "They killed George Burns at 100. If he hadn't smoked them, he'd have died at 75." For himself, Mr. Sugar said, he favors a good cigar because "it gives me something to hold onto in case I fall down."
No question, the smoky gathering at Gallagher's was a publicity stunt. But then, like any elected official, the mayor has his own publicity stunts. They are called news conferences.
There is nothing like a politically incorrect event to draw a herd of notebooks and microphones, and the anti-Bloomberg protest was no exception. It was, in the main, a witty group, reaffirming this nonsmoking columnist's conviction that people in a restaurant's smoking section tend to be more interesting, pound for pound, than those at the goody-goody tables.
O.K., some at Gallagher's were uncomfortably gung-ho in defending secondhand smoke. But they were pro-choice in the strictest sense, defending one's right to engage in legal behavior no matter how Neanderthal most people may find it.
"I'm in the business of taking care of customers, and some of them like to smoke," said Bryan Reidy, the restaurant's general manager. "We have a whole section for smokers, and so far we have no complaints from the nonsmokers. We're just concerned about the government making the decision for us."
AS for Mr. Bloomberg's contention that restaurants and bars should be treated as workplaces rather than social establishments, thus requiring government protection for employees, Nick Mellas shrugged. Mr. Mellas has tended bar at Gallagher's since 1966. Somehow, he said, he has made it to 84 with "no respiratory illnesses whatsoever."
Besides, said Francis Facciolo, a cigar-smoking lawyer, "people who work in bars choose that kind of work. If in fact there's a correlation to health problems, which I doubt, it's a choice they've made."
Cigar types far outnumbered cigarette smokers at this protest, and they happily trumpeted the virtues of their vice. "Cigarette smoking can be an isolating activity, something you do by yourself all day" said Gus Waite, who runs a school for actors in Manhattan. "But cigar smoking is primarily a social event with other like-minded people."
The point, Mr. Waite said, is that "there are 10,000 restaurants in this city." Nonsmokers have endless choices. Why, he asked, must every place be tobacco-free, effectively erasing the rights of a minority wishing to engage in an activity that is both legal and perfectly acceptable to many restaurant owners, their employees and their nonsmoking patrons?
The City Council plans a hearing on the issue next month, and there is no guarantee that Mr. Bloomberg's proposal will sail through unscathed. Mr. Waite doubted that the smoke-in would change many minds. But it was important, he said, to at least make a last-gasp stand.
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