Former New Jersey Governor Richard Codey today at City Hall. (Photo: Jill Colvin)

The nanny state is creeping across the border.

New Jersey lawmakers traveled all the way to New York City Hall Thursday to announce their plans to introduce legislation boosting the tobacco purchase age in the Garden State to 21. The announcement comes less than a month after City Council Speaker Christine Quinn unveiled similar plans for the city, which were quickly followed by lawmakers in Albany.

“Less than a month after our initial announcement, our great neighboring state of New Jersey is planning to introduce legislation to do exactly the same thing: raise the age to purchase tobacco to 21,” Ms. Quinn said at a press conference, where she was joined by ex-New Jersey Gov. Richard Codey, who is now a state senator, and New Jersey Assemblyman Ruben Ramos. “This has now truly become a regional, if not national, effort,” added Ms. Quinn.

Mr. Codey, who plans to introduce the legislation next Monday, acknowledged it was rather unusual for lawmakers from his state to travel to Manhattan to make announcements about their plans.

“I said that to my staff,” he told reporters when asked about the decision and how New Jersey residents might react to the news. But, he explained that, while he’d been sitting on the legislation for a while, the latest push was inspired by Ms. Quinn.

“You know what? It’s about doing the right thing,” he said.

Ms. Quinn, who has a vacation home in Jersey, also promised that next time they worked on something together, she'd be the one to travel--prompting an exchange that made it clear that Ms. Quinn's mayoral campaign is always on her colleagues' minds.

“The next piece of legislation that we do together, we will go to Trenton or whatever,” she said.

“Hopefully you’ll come as the mayor,” Mr. Codey said.

“From New Jersey’s lips to God’s ears!" said Ms. Quinn.

Asked if that counted as an endorsement, Mr. Codey was coy.

“She hasn’t asked me yet. I like a lady to ask! What’s wrong with that?” he said, prompting a big hug between the two as Ms. Quinn laughed.

State Senator Diane Savino also took the chance to try to stir up cross-border competition, issuing a challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey’s Chris Christie, who just might end up facing each other in the presidential election in 2016.

“We have a governor--you may have heard of him--Andrew Cuomo. He’s got a little bit of healthy competition with your governor, Gov. Christie. So this is a challenge to see which state can be the leader, who can pass it first, and which governor could put their signature on it,"she said.

Ms. Quinn welcomed the competition. “If anything will light a little bit of fire under the you-know-what’s in Albany or Trenton," she said.

Mr. Christie's office did not immediately respond to a call for comment on whether he supports the 21 push.

Robert Bookman, attorney for the NYC Newsstand Operators Association, denounces Mayor Bloomberg's bills.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been accused of many things over the years, but at a press conference today, a representative of the New York Association of Grocery Stores provided a new nickname: magician.

"This mayor must be the great Houdini--he must be Houdini--because in 2001, when he took office, we were selling 42 million cartons of cigarettes in the City of New York," the representative, David Schwartz, contended. "The great Houdini waved his magic wand and all of a sudden, in 2013 we're selling 7 million cartons of cigarettes."

Mr. Schwartz, needless to say, did not find that drop a credible reflection of actual declines in smoking.

"If anyone believes that smoking dropped from 42 million to 7 million," he explained, "then there's a bridge behind us I'd like to sell everybody."

Instead, he blamed the drop on black market sales.

"This mayor and this council has created the largest black market we have ever seen. This black market in cigarettes rivals the drug trade. Opportunists have taken advantage of the system and they are buying untaxed cigarettes in this city and they are selling them all over the place," Mr. Schwartz said, railing loudly against the mayor in front of a tobacco store near City Hall.

Mr. Schwartz was one of several members of a new coalition, Save Our Stores, that recently formed to vehemently oppose Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to forbid stores from publicly displaying cigarettes and tobacco products, as well as establishing a minimum price for cigarettes and prohibiting retailers from redeeming cigarette coupons. The coalition, naturally, ripped both into Mr. Bloomberg's policies and the mayor himself, depicting him as an enemy of small businesses who swamps them endlessly in fines and regulations.

The various speakers argued that, beyond creating a burgeoning black market for cigarettes, the proposal would be unfair to adult consumers and restrict the ability of retailers to compete on price, harming their bottom line. They even contended the display ban would violate the First Amendment, which they said protects the communication of truthful and non-misleading commercial messages about lawful products. A representative from the coalition told Politicker, however, that they were a "non-political" group that would not be wading into this year's mayoral race.

"The display ban will not serve its stated goal and in fact will have the opposite effect," said Robert Bookman, an attorney for the NYC Newsstand Operators Association. "This law is going to require us to replace that wall of cigarettes with probably siding, wood panels. What do you think is going to go on those siding or wood panels? Cigarette advertising. It's not going to be an empty wall, so we're going to replace really unattractive cigarette packs with very attractive ads of Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man and Newport for sale here."

Chong Sik Lee, president of the Korean-American Grocers Association of New York, said these proposals were just more examples of how small businesses owners seem to be under constant attack from the Bloomberg Administration.

"Even if we have an out-of-date sign, we get fined right away," Mr. Lee said. "On top of that, the proposal requires us to make changes to our stores to hide tobacco products. Why do we have to hide legal products?"

The City Council's Health Committee will hold hearings on the legislative proposals starting tomorrow.

Mr. Bloomberg's office didn't immediately have comment, but the administration has previously touted its anti-smoking efforts as life-saving tools critical to raising New Yorkers' life expectancy rates.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he was also skeptical about raising the age on cigarette sales. (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Conde Nast)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he, too, had his doubts about a plan to boost the age on purchasing cigarettes, until those tony folks in England tried it first.

"I was always skeptical," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters following a press event Tuesday announcing a deal to build what officials touted as the largest ice complex on the planet at the stalled Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx.

"But it was actually done in England recently and it really did work," he said.

The plan, unveiled by City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley and City Council Speaker and mayoral hopeful Christine Quinn on Monday, would make New York the first major city in the country to raise the minimum age on the purchase of cigarettes from 18 to 21.

It's just the latest effort in the city's battle to snuff out cigarettes, following bans in parks, bars and restaurants and a bid to force shop owners to keep smokes out of sight.

But the mayor said that, this time, the idea wasn't his. In fact, he'd opposed it when it was first proposed. But now he said that anything that might make it more difficult for teens to get hooked was worth a test.

"I think it's certainly worth trying," he said.

Mr. Bloomberg's spokeswoman, Samantha Levine, also credited a recent plateau in the city's teen smoking rate for the change of heart.

"You may have seen we recently proposed some other measures we had not supported before–requiring stores to remove cigarettes from public view and setting a minimum price – to try to address this. So we revisited this proposal and found new data from the UK that shows it can have an impact," she said.

(Photo: Getty)

Earlier today, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Health Commissioner Tom Farley unveiled new legislation to raise the city's minimum age threshold for tobacco purchases from 18 to 21 years. The move was applauded by smoking advocates, including Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Lung Association of the Northeast and more, but not everyone was happy with the bill.

Notably, Jim Calvin, the president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, argued that the vast majority of underage smokers obtain their cigarettes from older relatives and friends--not by over-the-counter purchases--rendering the legislation ineffective.

"It's doomed to failure, unfortunately, by the sad realities of where kids are getting cigarettes these days," Mr. Calvin told Politicker, claiming that purchases would simply go through un-taxed mediums. "There's a thriving black market in all five boroughs, in the streets of New York, in neighboring jurisdictions--Nassau County, Westchester County, New Jersey--all would have lower ages."

Mr. Calvin further said the city's government should be focusing instead on making the actual act of underage smoking a civil violation.

"Rather than address these problems, the City Council leadership chooses to nibble around the edges of the smoking problem by increasing the purchase age," he added. "I don't get it."

Mr. Calvin wasn't the only bill's only critic. Audrey Silk, the founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, blasted out a statement asking, "[A]t what age are we safe from the politicians’ tyranny?"

Correction: This post incorrectly stated Mr. Calvin's position on underage smoking as criminalization instead of merely making the act a civil violation.

(Photo: Getty)

On the 10th anniversary of New York City banning smoking in bars and restaurants, Mayor Michael Bloomberg rebuffed any claims that his controversial public health policies violate the underpinnings of American capitalism.

"We interfere with free enterprise all the time," Mr. Bloomberg said this morning at a press conference commemorating the Smoke-Free Air Act. "We set minimum prices and sizes on lots of things. ... Most of the cost of cigarettes is in taxes and they're taxes that are enacted by Albany. So if you don't like that, my suggestion is you go up to Albany and ask them why they're taxing cigarettes. I happen to think it's a great idea because it saves kids's lives, so maybe you want to also talk to the parents of the kids and say, 'We're gonna try to stop this and have them smoke and they'll die.'"

As he hailed what he believed was local, national and international impact of the wide-reaching smoking ban, Mr. Bloomberg insisted that government brought about changes in New Yorkers' smoking habits, saving an estimated 10,000 lives. He used the testimony of a Manhattan bar owner, bartender and waitress to drive the point home.

"This comes from government and the government has a reason to do it," he reiterated. "We use taxes to incentivize or disincentivize different types of activities all the time."

“They are trying to get around the law by claiming they’re not in the business of selling cigarettes when they clearly are,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. “Most businesses abide by the law, play by the rules and pay their taxes. We are not going to allow some businesses to skirt the law and we will ensure the playing field is level. They are cheating other businesses out of customers and attempting to illegally dilute one of our strongest smoking deterrents.”

The suit targets Island Smokes LLC, a Staten Island company with an outlet on the Lower East Side co-run by NYPD captain John Kimball. Island claims it simply "facilitates" buying cigarettes, rather than selling or making them, allowing the store to avoid taxes and statutes that see packaged smokes cost as much as $14.50 in some stores. The store's ruse is to have customers roll their own using pipe tobacco - taxed at a lower rate than cigarette tobacco - and cigarette-stuffing machines that instantaneously provide them with a finished pack.

Himself a non-smoker, Mr. Kimball told the New Yorker he was motivated to open the shop last May after seeing "smokers get turned into lepers" by the Bloomberg administration's crackdown. The ensuing flurry of business and publicity has encouraged Island to look into opening ten more franchises city-wide, which City Hall has been trying to prevent since sending them a cease-and-desist letter last month. Island's owners don't seem too concerned: they're actively soliciting investors on their site, calling Island's model "the best business opportunity in any economy, especially the current one."

If the lawsuit doesn't work, Mr. Bloomberg can fall back on health-and-safety concerns like the ones he used to evict Occupy Wall Street last week, since state law requires all cigarettes be certified as "fire-safe." Island, for its part, thinks its smokes are a healthy alternative to store-bought straights - 70% of which, they say, contain as many as 599 chemical compounds.

Fourteen percent of New Yorkers smoke, the lowest percentage in the city's history and an eight-point drop since Mr. Bloomberg banned lighting up in public places in 2002. That success aside, smoking-related diseases (did you know it's bad for you?) are still the number one cause of premature death in the city, according to the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene.

The mayor's shown no signs of letting up since then, most recently banning smoking in parks and on beaches. Mr. Bloomberg also touted a reason to feel confident going into this latest legal battle -  a U.S. District Court judge upheld the city's ban on smokeless flavored tobacco earlier this week.

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