City: Massive Operation in Indian Reservation Cigarette Sales

Last month the city filed a federal lawsuit against eight of the biggest cigarette dealers on the 50-acre Poospatuck reservation in Mastic, Long Island, where 11.3 million cartons of untaxed cigarettes where sold last year alone. Mayor Bloomberg argues that the sales deprive the city of $195 million in annual tax revenue, and city lawyers are seeking an injunction to stop the defendants immediately, the Times reports. Harry Wallace, chief of the Poospatuck tribe, says, "It’s just interfering and trying to interfere with the lawful retail trade on our land." But the lawsuit alleges that many of the cigarette proprietors are not even members of the tribe, and that each of the 279 residents of the reservation (including children) would have to smoke 19,200 cigarettes a day to account for the millions of cigarettes sold there in 2007.