NEW YORK CITY — New York City filed a federal lawsuit against companies that flout city, state and federal law by selling flavored nicotine vapes to local businesses, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday.
And the mayor said he won’t just be content with snuffing out sales of popular vapes.
“I believe that we need to ban cigarettes,” he said.
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The mayor’s tobacco prohibition stance came amid a news conference in which he announced a new federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan against four distributors of flavored disposable e-cigarette products.
Rest easy, smokers — the lawsuit itself does nothing to move forward the mayor’s cigarette ban hopes. Instead, it aims to stop the four companies from selling flavored vape products in the city.
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Such flavored vape products have been banned by the Food and Drug Administration, the state of New York and the city itself in recent years amid fears that they entice youngsters to use them.
The lawsuit accuses the distributors of illegally selling those products, which include such popular vapes as Elf Bar, Hyde and JUNO, in New York City. The vapes came in flavors ranging from cola to cherry peach lemonade to strawberry ice cream.
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“New York City will not allow them to break our laws and put our young people at risk of nicotine addiction,” Adams said.
The distributors are Empire Vape Distributors in Queens, Star Vape in Brooklyn and two Buffalo-based companies, Magellan Technology Inc. and Demand Vape.
Adams said the lawsuit aims to stop the companies from poisoning children. He then went farther and said cigarettes in general are a major killer.
“I’m a believer that we should really look at the potentiality of getting rid of cigarettes,” he said.
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