ALBANY — The battle over Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul’s plans to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes and hit smokers with an additional dollar-per-pack tax is heating up as supporters launch a new ad campaign.
Tobacco Kills NY, a statewide coalition including civil rights and health advocates, unveiled a major ad campaign Thursday highlighting the harms of flavored tobacco products and pushing back on opponents to the governor’s proposals.
“Black and brown New Yorkers have been targeted by Big Tobacco for generations with lies and dangerous products, making our rates of disease and death far higher than white smokers,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York State Conference, part of the coalition. “Now Big Tobacco continues to fund misinformation campaigns that confuse the facts about our important legislation to remove deadly menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products from stores.”
The group’s ads will air statewide throughout March as legislative leaders and the governor’s office craft a final state spending plan ahead of an April 1 fiscal deadline.
Hochul, hoping to drive down tobacco use among younger New Yorkers and curb smoking in minority communities, included legislative changes banning all flavored tobacco products and increasing taxes on cigarette purchases in her $227 billion budget proposal last month.
Menthol cigarettes are used by over half of all adult smokers, while 86% of Black and 72% of Hispanic smokers exclusively smoke menthol, the state health department reports.
Tobacco Kills NY’s new push comes days after a Siena College poll showed the majority of New Yorkers support the proposed ban on menthol-flavored tobacco products, with 57% in favor versus 35% against.
Respondents gave the thumbs up to Hochul’s $1-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes, with only a third saying they oppose the measure.
Critics have slammed the proposed prohibition, arguing it won’t decrease smoking rates but will be a boon for black market cigarette sales and harm convenience store owners.
Kent Sopris, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, joined local business owners and law enforcement officials Thursday outside of an upstate shop to push back on the ban.
“These regressive policies will increase crime and strengthen the illegal market, rob state and local governments of much-needed tax revenue and put legitimate retailers out of business,” Sopris said. “What it won’t do is stop smoking and the more New Yorkers hear the facts the more they realize that prohibition doesn’t work.”
After Massachusetts became the first state to ban all flavored tobacco products in 2020, sales of cigarettes in New Hampshire increased by 22% and in Rhode Island by 18%.
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