Smoking Placard No Longer Required
In March, a Board of Health directive ordered retailers to display posters of a rotting tooth, a cancerous lung and a smoke-damaged brain on walls and registers. Store owners that would not comply could be fined $2,000. Now, even after a federal court ruling struck down the order, many of these signs can still be found throughout the city, voluntarily. A spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department confirmed that the ordinance is no longer being enforced.
In an interview, she said retailers would not be informed of the case because “individualized notice is not required when laws of general applicability like this one are adopted.”
But trade organizations like the New York Association of Convenience Stores say because of this, many retailers are unaware that the law has changed and still believe that they will be fined if the posters are taken down.
An employee at the Anis Munaser convenience store in Brooklyn, however, said he was fully aware of it and took down the signs immediately afterward.
Others, like Sawar Kaml, manager of Price Wise Discount on Union Square East, said they would keep the signs up regardless of the policy. “I was not aware,” he said. “We like to have the posters up so that no one Viceroy smokes. No one makes money off of cigarettes anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
James Calvin, a plaintiff in the case against the Board of Health directive and the president of the NYACS, said the signs are too shocking and revealing, and in effect have been detrimental to businesses throughout the city.
“We have customers coming in all day,” he said. “These images are pretty nauseating; they turn off and offend and chase away customers who aren’t in the store to buy tobacco, and we can’t afford to lose customers in this economic situation. It’s not appropriate; it’s not fair for us or them.”
But others disagree. Jonathan H. Whiteson, NYU Langone’s cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation director, said that convenience stores and bodegas are morally obligated to report the truth.
“I believe the city has to ‘get the message across’ to all consumers of cigarettes, adults and children: Smoking is bad for the health and leads to premature disease and death,” he said. “I would fully approve of the city using all avenues to stop people from smoking, as well as help people quit. There are many different arenas and methods for delivering the message, but the anti-smoking airways must never go silent.”
As a soccer player, CAS junior Nima Nahvi said personal experience has shown how dangerous smoking cigarettes can be to one’s health.
“Smoking is bad. It smells bad, tastes bad, wastes money and can ultimately kill you,” Nahvi said. “It inhibits your athletic ability. There are so many other ways that you can relax and smoking shouldn’t be one of them.”
Gallatin freshman Melissa Bean said she didn’t agree with the posters.
“I’ve seen the posters. They’re pretty biased and I’ve got to admit, it disturbed me a little,” she said. “Smoking is unhealthy, true, but this propaganda is not the way that they should go about dealing with the issue. We need to take a better approach.”
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