Cigarettes informational blog!

State and county lawyers told New York's top court Thursday that officials can tax Indian cigarettes and prosecute sellers of untaxed smokes.

But David DeBruin, a lawyer for the Cayuga Indian Nation, countered that authorities would be encroaching on tribal rights and that the Cayugas do not have to collect the tax for the state from non-Indian smokers.

"The liability for the tax is on the consumer," he said.

About 100 Indian protesters gathered across from the courthouse in Syracuse where the Court of Appeals heard the case. They included Cayugas, as well as Senecas and Mohawks from western and northern New York. A few protesters drummed and chanted, while many carried placards. Some read: "Break a treaty, break a law" and "Whether we are poor or prosperous the treaties still stand."

Nearly a dozen speakers addressed the gathering.

"Those lands have never lost what they meant. Our people were born to this land," said Arthur Montour Jr. of the Seneca Nation. "We are being attacked today. We are nontaxable. We are not under the thumb of New York state. It's up to us to decide. There is nothing to negotiate, no matter what those black robes say. We will be there to defend."

More than one-third of the cigarettes sold in New York by licensed agents go without tax stamps to Native American merchants, according to state officials. If all were stamped and taxed, New York would have collected $825 million more in 2008.

Seneca and Cayuga county officials estimate the Cayugas's LakeSide Trading stores in Union Springs and Seneca Falls owe $485,000 in state excise taxes.

The court is expected to rule next month.

Indian smoke shops have enjoyed a huge business in cigarettes since the mid-1990s partly because of a string of governors who have refused to enforce state laws that were supposed to set up a system for taxing sales to the general public.

Now Gov. David Paterson's administration is proposing enforcement rules that would limit supplies of tax-free reservation cigarettes to those for personal use by tribe members.

The Cayugas bought the two stores in central New York and began selling untaxed cigarettes in 2003, the same year the New York Legislature passed a measure to tax reservation cigarette sales to non-Indians.

"We are selling unstamped cigarettes. We don't deny that. We don't hide that," DeBruin said.

Seneca and Cayuga county officials seized 176,000 cartons of unstamped cigarettes in 2008, leading to the lawsuit by the Cayugas. They want the cigarettes back and pending indictments thrown out.

Attorney Philip Spellane, representing both counties, argued before the court that the two Cayuga shops, while located among 64,000 acres that once were tribal lands, were relatively recent purchases and not actual reservation property with sovereign Indian rights.

Deputy Solicitor General Andrew Bing, representing the state, said even if the Cayuga land qualified as reservation, taxes were still owed for non-Indian sales. He agreed with Spellane that the two stores don't qualify as reservation and should pay state excise taxes of $2.75 per pack on all sales, like most cigarette retailers.

In August, a trial judge refused to order the return of the seized cigarettes at the Cayugas' two upstate New York convenience stores.

Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Fisher, who had initially ruled that the tribe could not sell untaxed cigarettes, said that while a midlevel court's reversal of his decision changed the landscape somewhat, the cigarettes were still evidence seized as part of a criminal action and didn't have to be returned with the appeal pending.

Fisher also denied the tribe's request that the counties put up a bond to cover the value of the cigarettes, estimated at more than $500,000.

A divided midlevel Appellate Division court then concluded the Cayuga stores are on reservation land and cited 2005 amendments to the state law with a coupon program for tax-free tribal cigarettes that regulators failed to implement.

FIRES started by cigarettes kill more people than any other kind of fire - accounting for one third of all accidental fatal fires in the home. 

That’s why Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service is supporting National No Smoking Day on Wednesday, March 10.

Chief Fire Officer at Gloucestershire Fire & Rescue Service, Terry Standing said: "Smoking isn’t just about damaging your health; it’s also one of the biggest causes of accidental fires.

"We’re happy to support No Smoking Day as we are keen to remind people of the dangers of smoking and prevent as many fires as possible.

"We’re not here to lecture, but we will be on hand to give tips and advice and hopefully prevent at least one smoking related fire this year."

Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service issued these tips. If you do smoke:

· Make sure you have completely extinguished smoking materials before leaving the house or going to bed.

· Don’t empty ashtrays into bins; damp the contents with water and place into a metal container, preferably outside.

· If you are tired or have consumed alcohol and are alone in a room, don’t smoke.

· Never smoke in bed.

Many of those most at risk include older people and students living alone. 

Cigarette smoking has dropped dramatically since the 1960s, but the smaller proportion of people who smoke pipes or cigars has increased in the past decade. A new study linking pipes and cigars to breathing problems bolsters public health warnings that they are not safe alternatives to cigarettes. Discuss
Dr. Josanna Rodriguez of Columbia University and colleagues studied more than 3,500 people with an average age of 66 in a study of atherosclerosis.

About 9 percent of participants said they had ever been pipe smokers, about 11 percent reported cigar smoking, and about half said they had smoked cigarettes. Almost 90 percent of pipe or cigar smokers had previously smoked cigarettes. The researchers found that people who smoked pipes or cigars were twice as likely to have airflow obstruction as people who never smoked. If they had also smoked cigarettes, they were more than three times more likely than nonsmokers to have airflow obstruction. Lung function also decreased as the amount of cigar or pipe smoking increased.

BOTTOM LINE: Smokers of cigars or pipes had about twice the risk as people who never smoked of having the abnormal lung function found in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

CAUTIONS: Because so few of the participants had smoked only pipes or cigars, the researchers could not eliminate the impact of cigarette smoking.

WHERE TO FIND IT: Annals of Internal Medicine, Feb. 16

Testing ‘flat head’ babies
About 2 out of 10 babies develop positional plagiocephaly, or “flat head’’ syndrome, in the first year of life. Infants’ skulls are soft and malleable, so if they lie in one position, their heads can conform to the flat surface. Babies diagnosed with this syndrome scored lower on tests of motor and cognitive skills than unaffected babies in a new study. But the authors emphasized that their findings are not a reason for parents to stop putting babies to sleep on their backs, which has been shown to lower the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.


Matthew L. Speltz of the University of Washington led the study comparing 235 babies recently diagnosed with flat head syndrome with 237 babies from similar backgrounds without that diagnosis. All were 4 to 12 months old. The scientists assessed motor skills and cognitive skills.

The biggest difference was seen in motor skills: 20 percent of babies with flat head syndrome had scores indicating developmental delay compared with 9 percent of babies in the control group. But the authors noted that 16 percent of babies in the general population have motor skill delays, which suggests the study may have overstated the difference.

While the study did not show that flat head syndrome caused the developmental differences, the authors encouraged pediatricians to pay close attention to the motor development of babies diagnosed with flat head syndrome. They also urged parents to find ways to vary their baby’s position during waking hours.

BOTTOM LINE: Babies who had been diagnosed with flat head syndrome scored lower on tests of motor and cognitive skills than infants without this syndrome.

CAUTIONS: This kind of study does not allow researchers to determine whether flat head syndrome caused the apparent developmental delays, nor can it rule out the possibility that motor and cognitive delays caused children to have flat heads from staying in one position.

 

WHAT’S NEXT: The researchers will test the babies when they are 18 and 36 months old to see whether differences persist.