There has been steadily increasing smoking legislation and tobacco control policies aimed at curbing new people from picking up smoking and encouraging smokers to put the smokes down. In New York, these new laws are having great effect. New York mayor Bill de Blasio has snuffed out smoking more aggressively than any of his predecessors. According to the latest figures, less than twenty percent of New Yorkers now smoke. This is in part due to the series of seven bills aims to reduce the number of smokers in New York City by 2020. These bills include:
- Raising the cigarette pack prices. This bill will see prices for cigarettes go from eleven dollars to thirteen dollars per pack.
- The city council wants to limit the number of retailers with tobacco licenses. The council body also aims to cut the current retailer number by half.
- Capping the number of electronic cigarettes retailers. The city council also plans to introduce a license that will regulate the vaping business.
- The city council of New York City plans to increase the licensing fee from a hundred and ten dollars to two hundred dollars.
- The council will require residential building owners to come up with a smoking policy to serve the current and future residents of their buildings. The owners will also be forced to disclose this policy to the tenants.
- The New York city council aims to get smoking banned from all common places.
- As of 2018, the New York city council will not allow pharmacies to sell any tobacco or tobacco related products.
The mayor’s legislation wants to reduce the more than 900,000 smokers in the city to a historic low of 12 percent. The mayor’s policies have also started a trend where people prefer vaping over smoking. It is now cheaper, easier, and healthier to pick up an e-cigarette or pod system for vaping than it is to buy a pack of smokes. His new policies are stricter on cigarettes than on smoking. The price increase will also make a lot of new Yorkers to switch to vaping as smoking will prove to be expensive. The mayor says his goal is to reduce the number of lives lost due to smoking.
Author, Taylor Presley is living in United States. Taylor Presley is part of our authors community since and has published 1 post.
