Keeping Cigarettes Out Of Drugstores | CigarettesPro.Com Tobacco News

Keeping Cigarettes Out Of Drugstores

The public will have an opportunity Tuesday night to talk on a proposed law to ban the sale of cheap cigarettes and cheap cigarettes products in pharmacies throughout Albany County.

The local law was introduced by Legislator Wanda Willingham earlier this month and sent to the Health and Audit and Finance committees for review.

The legislation is designed to broaden existing laws affecting cigarettes sales, such as ordinances that prohibit selling to minors. Because it's in committee, no date has been set for the new measure to be voted on by the 39-member Legislature, but the public hearing will be at 7:15 p.m.

The law would prohibit the sale of cheap smokes products in pharmacies or retail establishments that contain pharmacies, such as supermarkets and big box stores.

Marra's Pharmacy in Cohoes, one of a few privately owned drug stores in the county, stopped selling cheap cigarettes products 20 years ago, becoming the first pharmacy in the county to go cigarettes-free, said Cohoes Mayor John McDonald III, owner of the pharmacy who is familiar with the proposed legislation.

"There is a hint of contradiction," he said, "for stores promoting themselves nationally as a place for health care services, while selling an item that's adverse to the health (of customers). At the same token, I do believe that after a while businesses do get a little tired of government telling them what to do."

County lawmakers have approved a littany of bans within the last few years, including the use of trans fat products by restaurants and bakeries as well as regulating where convicted sex offenders can live, a law that is being challenged in court.

One group geared up to speak at the hearing is the Capital District cigarettes-Free Coalition. Judy Rightmyer, its director since 2001, said during the last decade, the "smoking cigarettes rate in New York dropped from 23 percent of the population to 17 percent," primarily because of the ban on smoking cigarettes in public places like bars, restaurants and work places.

The coalition, she said, finds a direct correlation between the skyrocketing taxes on buy cigarettes to fewer young people taking up the habit. She will be joined at the hearing by high school students from the Albany Leadership Charter School for Girls.

"Pharmacies are places of health, and cheap cigarettes does not belong in a place of health," Rightmyer said. "Pharmacists are one of the most accessible health care providers that we have in our community. People can speak with them. They provide flu shots. Blood pressure can be checked. They provide health advice."

Nationwide, "pharmacies are marketing themselves as places of health, and it's incongruous that they sell online cigarettes when it's been shown to cause death," Rightmyer said.

The Albany County law points out that each year 13,000 New Yorkers are diagnosed with lung cancer and 9,400 men and women statewide died of the disease.

In 2008, San Francisco became the first municipality in the nation to ban cigarettes sales at pharmacies. A year later, a similar law took effect in Boston. Ten municipalities in Massachusetts require cigarettes-free pharmacies, she said.

Rightmyer said she met with the Albany County Board of Health last fall to win its support.

For Michael Rosen of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, a trade association representing retail food stores, the part of the law banning cigarettes products in supermarkets that also contain pharmacies, is troubling. Of the 19 Hannafords and Price Choppers in the county, 11 have pharmacies, he said.

"The argument is, if you sell or dispense prescription drugs, it is confusing to the public if you also sell cigarettes products," Rosen said. "In these stores, cigarettes is not sold from the pharmacy. Pharmacists never handle cigarettes. It is sold in other parts of the stores.

Supermarkets typically carry 50,000 product items, "some are healthy and some may not be, such as soda and snack foods," he said. "The public knows the difference. In our view, in a free society, people should be allowed to choose. It's the government telling the shopper where they have to go."

Price Chopper and Hannaford have made "strong efforts to guard against underage sale of cigarettes to minors," he said. The training of cashiers has been certified by health officials. "If the bill were to pass, you would take some of the most diligent and safe retailers out of the business."

Kirby Hannan of K. T. Hannan Public Affairs, a lobbying firm in Albany that represents Hannaford supermarkets, said of the proposed law, "We're definitely watching it, concerned about it, but not opposed to it." He said he's interested to "see how it plays out at the public hearing."


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