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Mastic tribe worries over cigarette tax crackdown
Quick ReadThe financial underpinning of the tribe's transformation - the sale of untaxed cigarettes to people who are not Unkechaug members - is now under threat.
Photo credit: John Paraskevas | Tevin Rivera holds a cigarette ad as he tries to direct buyers to his family's cigarette store on the Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic. (Nov. 4, 2009)
On a brisk autumn day in Mastic, a tree-lined lane abruptly gives way to a jarring collage of signs for Newport and Seneca and King Mountain cigarettes at the Poospatuck Indian Reservation, where a tribe once locked in poverty fights its way out on narrow roads paved by cigarette sales.
Harry Wallace, chief of the Unkechaug tribe, typically maintains a hard, Steven Seagal demeanor, but he...
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