Hookahs, Cigarettes Would Be Banned From NYC Bodega Shelves Under New Bill

INWOOD, NY — Hookahs, hookah tobacco, cigarettes and other smoking products and paraphernalia would be yanked from the shelves and window displays of bodegas and most other shops across NYC under a bill proposed this week by City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, who represents Washington Heights and Inwood at City Hall.

Hookahs have "so inundated our community," Rodriguez wrote on Facebook Friday, "that bodegas and other convenience stores have become hookah outlets."

"Kids and parents often smoke hookah on the street during the summer time and our restaurants are filled with smoke," the council member said. "We as a community, as a city, can do better."

If the majority of the council's 51 members sign off on the bill, all city businesses — aside from "retail tobacco stores," aka dedicated smoke shops, or stores where you already have to be 21 to enter — will be forced to hide hookahs and other smoking products from view until the point of sale.

Business owners who violated this policy would be charged $1,000 on first offense, $2,000 on second offense and $5,000 on third offense. (After three years, though, the clock would reset, and another violation would cost a business $1,000.)

Similar legislation was proposed by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg circa 2013, along with a package of other strict tobacco-related bills — including raising the smoking age from 18 to 21 and upping the minimum price for a pack of smokes to $10.50. However, while the other bills passed, the display restrictions were nixed from the package at the last minute.

City Council Member Rodriguez said Friday that the problem has only worsened since then.

"Over the past several years, complaints over Hooka smoking in Washington Heights and Inwood have been on the rise," according to a statement released by his office. "During a summer evening, teenagers can be found on side streets and stoops with a water pipe, smoking with friends. This compounds with the heavy hooka use in local restaurants and the prevalence of hooka products in corner store window displays."

At this early stage in the bill's journey through City Hall, it's unclear how bodega owners with large selections of cigarettes and hookah products would go about showing customers their full lineup under such a law.

"That would be something we would talk through," Russell Murphy, a spokesman for Rodriguez' office, told Patch. "We want to have the conversations with the industry players, to be sure."

The Bodega Association of the United States has already come out in support of NYC's proposed display ban.

"It is the responsibility of all adults to do whatever it takes to protect our children," the association's president, Ramon Murphy, said Friday. "That is why I am proud to support Council Member Rodriguez's initiative to change the way tobacco products are marketed in our stores."

The bill's authors do expect some pushback in the coming months from local business owners — but mostly from Big Tobacco. "There was a tobacco lobbyist tracker at our press conference today," Rodriguez's spokesman said Friday. "He came up and asked me for a press release."

Photo via City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez