Hochul’s Tobacco Ban Is Pouring Gas on NYC's Raging Dumpster Fire

 Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Right now, New York is engulfed in a red hot firefight with the illicit market for all things smoke and the City is losing badly. The slow and clumsy rollout of recreational cannabis has created a wild west market throughout the five boroughs and the state. Prohibition on flavored nicotine vapes has largely been ignored by retailers. 

Lack of clarity over new regulations combined with insufficient enforcement resources has created an environment of lawlessness. Now in a policy move straight out of the Twilight Zone, Governor Hochul wants to pour gas on the dumpster fire with a ban on flavored tobacco that is playing right into the hands of smugglers, gangs, and organized crime.

New York is already the capital of the United States for illegal tobacco sales. It’s estimated that more than half of all cigarettes sold in New York City are sold illegally. If you buy a pack of smokes in Queens or Brooklyn, chances are that the tax stamp on the bottom will show it came from Virginia or North Carolina. Criminals load up trucks in lower tax states where cigarettes are cheaper and they ship them up to the Empire State where they can make millions in low risk profit.

As the former Sheriff of New York City who designed the tobacco enforcement regime, I know the challenge our law enforcement is facing. For violent gangs, it’s safer to traffic in illegal cigarettes than hard drugs because there are no laws against possessing a carton of cigarettes. Illegal tobacco is a lucrative cash commodity that has even been used to fund terror operations including the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. 

Our law enforcement professionals, try as they might, don’t have the resources or statutory authority in some cases to even police the market conditions that our government has created and if menthol cigarettes are made illegal, the illicit market will explode.

Now, amidst an already thriving criminal market for tobacco the governor has injected a new element in the form of recreational cannabis. When it comes to weed, New York is experiencing a different strain of illicit market. Opening up a recreational adult market for a product that was considered an illegal drug only last year (and still is in many parts of the country) has our communities dazed and confused with lack of clarity on how to control the new industry.

Out in the streets, opportunistic criminal entrepreneurs are taking maximum advantage. From weed trucks and pop-up stores on every block to THC products illegally sold in unlicensed stores and faux dispensaries, the gray market for weed has overwhelmed the city. Try as they might to stop the flood of illegal commerce, the law enforcement whack-a-mole approach can’t keep up. They need more resources, pure and simple.

But wait, there’s more. The market for e-cigarettes is another new complication to this whole mess. Flavored nicotine vapes have already been banned statewide, but again there’s been basically zero enforcement. You can still basically get them anywhere without much trouble. Vape shops around the state are still selling fruity flavored e-cigarettes without any enforcement. And when law enforcement has actually busted shops for illegal sales, the dangerous truth of this confused and out-of-control marketplace becomes abundantly clear.

Over the past few weeks, raids on vape shops in various communities tell the full story. Prohibited nicotine vapes seized alongside THC vapes, untaxed cigarettes, and other illegal products. The scariest piece of this puzzle is that the illicit market is flooded with unregulated, counterfeit products made in China, some even laced with fentanyl and other deadly drugs.

The social justice arguments for recreational cannabis and the public health justification for smoking cessation are both logical and clear, but in a strange twist they represent a contradiction. According to experts, prohibition of cannabis for decades has contributed to significant social ills including incarceration, and a booming underground economy for weed, without really stopping consumption. This failure is why the government is trying to correct those mistakes through a recreational market.

Prohibition of menthol cigarettes, a product that's disproportionately consumed by African Americans, will also create social ills including growth of the illicit market and increased police activity in urban communities without making any real impact in smoking rates.

In law enforcement, universal physical laws remain true. Every action generates a reaction. If you impose new laws, especially on substances like THC and nicotine, you have to make sure you understand the far reaching impacts of those laws. Prohibition doesn’t work, which is why the recreational cannabis market now exists. Prohibiting flavored tobacco and menthol cigarettes won’t work either. There’s no better proof than the failed enforcement disaster that’s playing out in New York’s streets today.

The people of New York deserve better than this.

Edgar Domenech is the former Sheriff of New York City. He served as Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2023/02/17/hochuls_tobacco_ban_is_pouring_gas_on_nycs_raging_dumpster_fire_882411.html