Madison County is developing plans to make c-stores and other retail establishments where minors can frequent go dark — but the rules would not apply tribal stores.
WAMPSVILLE, N.Y. – Dark tobacco retailing is trying to see the light of day in the United States — if the Madison County Board of Health is successful in issuing a retail display ban.
The Oneida Dispatch reports that the eight-member board is developing a tobacco products display ban that would affect any public establishment in the county that sells tobacco products. Tobacco products would have to be stored out of sight in stores where minors are present, such as in drawers underneath counters, in storage rooms, behind a curtain or in an “enclosed opaque shelving unit” — essentially anywhere that adults can’t readily see the tobacco product they want to buy.
But here’s the kicker: the ban would not be enforced at Oneida Nation-owned stores.
“You have got to be kidding me,” was the reaction from Jim Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores (NYACS), in a press release.
“In heart of Oneida Indian territory, where there are multiple SavOn stores that don't even abide by the existing statewide ban on self-service displays of tobacco — or any other state or local tobacco regulation, for that matter — the Madison County Health Department wants to force licensed, tax-collecting retailers to hide their cigarette inventory?” he questioned.
Calvin cited 15 licensing, taxation and other tobacco regulations that New York convenience stores are forced to follow, which are subsequently ignored by tribal stores.
“We’re drowning in double standards as it is,” Calvin continued. “And now Madison County wants to make it even worse by making us hide products we have been licensed by the State of New York to sell, giving our customers yet another reason to go down the road to the reservation? Are you kidding me?”
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