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JOYA DE NICARAGUA SPLITS WITH S.A.G.

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Phoenix retailer sues state health authority:
Magnum’s Cigar, Wine and Liquor Emporium filed suit last Friday against the Arizona Department of Health Services for declaring that the store is not a tobacco retailer under the meaning of the Smoke-free Arizona Act.

The Act, as passed by voters in November 2006, specifically exempted the category of “Retail tobacco store” so long as such store is “physically separated and independently ventilated so that smoke from retail tobacco stores does not infiltrate non-smoking areas.” A “retail tobacco store” was defined by the Act as “a retail store that derives the majority of its sales from tobacco products and accessories.”

The state’s Department of Health Services issued its own interpretation of the Act in “Substantive Policy Statement #SP-087-PHS-EDC” in which it stated the “Arizona Department of Health Services’ determination that a bar or a restaurant cannot be either a retail store or a retail tobacco store. Similarly, an establishment that uses the retail tobacco store exception of the Smoke-Free Arizona Act to permit indoor smoking cannot also be a bar or a restaurant.”

This creates a major problem for Magnum, which has a bar inside the store. “We are not a bar that sells cigarettes,” said owner Aram Patel in an interview with ABC15 in Phoenix. “We are quite the opposite. We are a cigar store that happens to have a bar in it.” Magnum offers a smoking lounge with a small bar in it, along with a massive, 500 sq. ft. walk-in humidor and a wide selection of beers, wines and spirits. Patel said if the state’s policy is upheld, his cigar business is finished.

Magnum’s attorneys sued on the basis that the Department of Health Services is changing the Act passed by the voters (which contains no such exclusion) to suit its own agenda.

”You are no longer welcome in my shop”
Those words are addressed to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and are posted on the door of the Tower Cigars & Pipes shop in Sacramento.

Owner Mark Just told KOVR-TV that Schwarzenegger is no longer welcome in his shop on Land Park Drive in the state’s capital city because of his support for a now-defeated plan to provide universal health-care insurance in California primarily by raising tobacco and hospital taxes.

The bill would have increased cigarette prices by $1.75 per pack (a 200% increase) and forced a corresponding increase in the taxes on cigars and other tobacco products. For cigars, already taxes at 45.13% of the manufacturer’s wholesale price, the increase could have tripled the tax to 135.39%! “It doesn't matter how many good things are in the bill if there isn't money to pay for them,”said ultra-liberal State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) as her Senate Health Committee voted down the $14.9 billion plan by a 10-2 margin on January 29.
~ Rich Perelman

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