Ten years ago, I was still working at my college part-time job at CVS. I was there for about twelve years until I finally quit back in 2016.

Retail is hard.

It’s even worse when customers complain to you, the clerk, about things that are not at all in your control. This happens when sale stickers mistakenly get left up, lines are long during the holidays (all holidays), or when the price of cigarettes increases.

Now, CVS hasn’t been selling cigarettes since February of 2014, but when the price of cigarettes went up in 2010, you can bet us cashiers were on the receiving end of a lot of flack from upset smokers.

This happened to me and my coworkers twice. The first in June of 2008, when NYS raised the excise tax on cigarettes by $1.25 (to $2.75) per pack, which gave the Empire State the distinction of having the nation’s highest tobacco excise tax.

The second time was in July of 2010, when the tax was increased by another $1.60 per pack, with the taxes on other tobacco products increasing in subsequent months.

It was good to see that many of my regular customers ended up quitting after the second increase. I had come to know these customers’ behavior quite a lot, in fact memorized which brand they smoked and had the packs out on the counter as I saw their car pull up – similar to that of a good coffee barista memorizing your order. But when they came in and declined the cellophane wrapped cartons, it was refreshing. Many of them turned to cellophane wrapped gum instead.

The American Heart Association feels that it’s time again for another increase. This time, they are rallying for a full dollar increase. According to the Association, conservative estimates show that a $1 per pack increase in the tax on cigarettes would result in 61,800 NYS adults quitting and 29,500 NYS youths under the age of 18 never picking up the habit at all.

The Association also reports that e-cigarette use has become an epidemic, and smoking remains the leading risk factor for heart disease and stroke, the No. 1 and No. 5 killers of all Americans.

On Monday, Dec. 7, from 10:30 – 10:45 a.m., the American Heart Association and their supporters will host a virtual rally to call for this increase – as well as tax parity for other tobacco products to be included in the governor’s 2021 executive budget proposal. This will be the first event in a series of actions scheduled for next week in support of the tax hike.

Notable Capital Region advocates and others will be speaking as part of the program.

  • Dr. Disha Mookherjee, cardiologist, Saratoga Hospital; member, Capital Region Board of Directors, American Heart Association
  • Riya Subbaiah, 17, Long Island
  • Raghav Joshi, 16, Director of Expansion, Students Against Nicotine; Rye Brook
  • Karl Shallowhorn, President, Shallowhorn Consulting, LLC, Author, Mental Health Advocate & Educator, Buffalo
  • Theresa Petrone Butts, former smoker and past chair of the Capital Region Advisory Board of the American Heart Association, Capital Region
  • Caitlin O’Brien, J.D., New York State Government Relations Director, American Heart Association

If you’d like to participate, you can access the rally at the following zoom link: https://heart.zoom.us/s/97992098895?pwd=eXp0MEpqaVh0bllXdzVmb3VGOEc5Zz09#success

If the $1 tax increase were to take effect, the Association calculates this would bring in $30.4 million in new state revenue annually – something that is very much in need at a time when New York faces an estimated $14 to $16 billion revenue shortfall as a revenue of the pandemic-induced economic fallout.