Who sells native cigarettes near me , the Mohawks have been selling their own cigarettes at a few local stores and through a Web site. They make the cigarettes at a factory behind their main casino in Oneida County, and they also sell them to other Indian-owned retail outlets and online. Those sales have given the tribe millions of dollars. But it also has created an ethical dilemma because the profits are generated by the sale of a deadly product.
The state has tried to collect taxes from the sales, but it has been a losing battle. The state tax department has been focusing its efforts on the state’s wholesalers, who are required to pass along the taxes to retailers. But even that has been a struggle. In New York, for example, the state’s Cayuga, Oneida and Onondaga nations bought more than 1.6 million cartons of national-brand Marlboros and Kools from wholesalers in 2009, according to a state official. That represents an $80 million local market that the state has lost to the native-made cigarettes.
Understanding Native Smokes: Varieties and Options
The cigarette sales have also created a new market for tribal brands of tobacco products, and it has become commonplace to see images of American Indian warriors and peace pipes on cigarette packaging. A study by UC Merced health psychology Professor Anna Epperson and Stanford University Professor Judith Prochaska found that respondents shown those images believed that the NAS brand was made by American Indian tribes and grew on Indian land, even though both of those claims are false. The findings suggest that using American Indian imagery to promote a cigarette can undermine public health messages that warn against smoking and may dissuade smokers from switching to less harmful brands or quitting altogether.