Applewhite: City should go after black-market cigarettes

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to push for a law that increases the age limit to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21 and the City Council's efforts to add e-cigarettes to the city's smoking ban are important steps in preventing smoking among young adults.

The age-limit legislation, which the mayor recently signed into law, makes New York the first major city to enact such a measure.

But neither the new law nor the e-cigarette measure the City Council is expected to approve later this month addresses a key issue: the cigarette black market. If the city wants to further impact early access to smokes, it also must try to eliminate access to all tobacco among young people.

In many neighborhood bodegas and stores, like mine in Harlem, young adults can purchase "loosies" -- individual cigarettes that cost between 50 cents and $1. Because the cigarettes are sold illegally, the seller takes little notice of the age of customers.

While Bloomberg's restaurant/bar smoking ban and the heavy taxes on cigarettes have been strong disincentives among adults, for young people, buying a loose cigarette from a local store is as easy as buying a box of Lemonheads.

Loosies are popular in poor and ethnic minority neighborhoods primarily because people may not have the money to buy a pack -- as much as $13.50 -- but they probably have $1 to buy loose cigarettes.

One way the city can crack down on the sale of loosies and tobacco products is to use an approach employed by its Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Just as the agency regulates the health conditions of restaurants -- handing out grades -- a similar policy for stores would lead owners to stop selling tobacco to minors, especially in areas with heavy racial/ethnic minority populations.

According to Frances Stillman, associate professor and co-director of the Institute for Global Control of Tobacco, young adults in urban areas who are economically disadvantaged are bombarded both with cigarette ads and black market tobacco products.

For young people in these communities, getting tobacco products is like taking candy from a baby. It's up to the city to make it harder.