Do you remember Eric Garner? He worked at a store on Staten Island, near where Victory Boulevard hits Bay Street, not too far from the ferry terminal. It's a busy area, lot's of street traffic, people waiting for buses, plus all the hundreds of people visiting the Social Security offices across the street. It was a good location to be selling "loosies", single cigarettes for people who couldn't afford a whole pack, or were trying to cut down on their habit. Unfortunately for him, the State and City had decided (by fiat once again) that selling loosies would be illegal (do you remember voting for that ban; I don't).
Poor Eric Garner, just trying to satisfy his customers, got caught in the middle, got arrested, over and over, until one day the cops were a little overzealous and put him in a chokehold which killed him.
As usual, people blamed the cops, called them racist bastards.
But the real root cause, the thing that enabled the cops to interact with Eric Garner that day, is the excessively high taxes on cigarettes. The government thinks that high cigarette taxes will deter people from smoking; they think it's their right to tell you what you can ingest or inhale, because you don’t have the vaguest clue what’s best for you. They think you're not smart enough to make your own decisions about how you live your life. We've seen that before, when mayor Adams said school lunches (once a week at first) had to be vegetarian, when mayor Bloomberg made it illegal to sell soft drinks in large containers, as well as his edicts on trans-fats and salt.
It wasn't the cops that killed Eric Garner, it was city and state regulations that restricted his rights, and the rights of his customers. Excessive taxes, which supposedly will make people stop smoking, create a dilemma for the government... They say want you to quit, because it's healthier for you, but if everyone actually does quit, then the government loses enormous amounts of tax revenues. It's really not in the government's best interest for you to quit smoking, because they'll lose the tax money.
These tobacco taxes impact poorer people disproportionately; $10 per pack times 365 days adds up to a lot of money for someone making under $50,000.
Solution?
NYC should become a sanctuary city that ignores all Federal, State and City taxes on tobacco and cigarettes. They'll save money on policing, they'll prevent another case like Eric Garner's from happening. More importantly, it will reinstate the lost Freedom for people .. to be free from government interference in what they eat, drink or inhale.
Don’t expect the current mayor or City Council to do what’s right.It’s time for sweeping change. All 51 City Council members are up for re-election this year… it’s time to toss them out.