New York joins San Francisco and Boston in banning pharmacy sale of tobacco

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio earlier this week signed a series of bills to help reduce the number of smokers in New York City by 160,000 by 2020, in part by banning the sale of tobacco products in retail pharmacy outlets by 2018.



"We'll be cutting the number of people selling, the number of stores selling tobacco products," de Blasio said during a news conference earlier this week. "New York City, right now, has more tobacco retailers than we have Starbucks and pizzerias combined. Everywhere you turn, unfortunately, there's a store selling tobacco. That has to change," he said. "We will be, in particular, ending the sale of these dangerous products at pharmacies. This will be a total ban on the sale of tobacco products at pharmacies."



New York City has high tobacco retail density, with about 8,300 licensed cigarette retailers’ citywide, averaging almost 30 dealers per square mile. Easy access to tobacco retailers makes it harder for smokers to quit. Based on conservative Health and DCA estimates, 10 years after implementation, this bill could achieve up to a 40% reduction in the number of tobacco retailers.



Of those, there are more than 550 pharmacies in New York City licensed to sell tobacco products. The prohibition would begin after these current licenses expire in 2018.



New York would join San Francisco and Boston as the only cities to ban pharmacies from selling tobacco products, according to the American Nonsmokers Rights Foundation, and would become one of 107 municipalities, primarily in California and Massachusetts, with similar bans.



Other measures signed into law to reduce the number of smokers in New York include raising the minimum prices for all tobacco products, including cigarettes, and imposing a new 10% local tax on tobacco products other than cigarettes; capping and reducing through attrition the number of tobacco retailers citywide; creating a retail license for e-cigarettes and capping the number of e-cigarette retailers; increasing the fee for a cigarette retail dealer license; requiring all residential buildings to create a smoking policy and disclosing it to both current and prospective tenants; and prohibiting smoking and the use of e-cigarettes in common areas in multiple dwellings with fewer than 10 units.