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Judge Rejects Challenge to NY's Ban on Internet Cigarette Sales [05/20-2]
Excerpts from: Judge rejects challenge to NY ban on Internet smokes sales
By CAROLYN THOMPSON Newsday [05/19/04]
A judge Wednesday threw out one of the last remaining legal challenges to the state's ban on Internet cigarette sales.
Seneca Indian businessman Scott Maybee had asserted that state lawmakers passed the ban improperly when, acting on a request by Gov. George Pataki, they skipped a three-day waiting period for voting on legislation.
Attorney Joseph Crangle argued unsuccessfully that Pataki's "message of necessity" requesting the speedy vote in the final days of the 2000 legislative session lacked the required facts about why it was necessary. Instead, the message contained only a summary of the bill, he said.
Dillon's ruling leaves just one lawsuit, filed by the New York State Motor Trucking Association, remaining over the much-challenged statute prohibiting cigarette sales directly to consumers over the Internet, by telephone, or by mail-order catalog.
Shortly after the law was passed, a federal court struck it down at the request of tobacco companies, saying it violated the interstate commerce clause of the state Constitution. That decision was overturned on appeal.
State officials, in passing the ban _ the first of its kind in the United States _ said it was necessary to prevent minors from illegally ordering cigarettes.
Opponents counter the law's true intent is to boost state tax collections by forcing smokers to buy cigarettes at stores within New York state. The state's tax on a pack of cigarettes is $1.50, pushing the price of cigarettes to around $5. Lower prices are offered on the Internet and in mail-order catalogs by tax-exempt Indian merchants and retailers in states with lower taxes.
A group calling itself Fair Application of Cigarette Taxes last year released a study indicating the state lost nearly $1.5 billion in tax revenues over the previous two years from untaxed cigarette sales via Native American stores, the Internet and telephone and cross-border sales.
Although the law was passed in 2000, the state only began enforcing it last year.
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