印度香烟论支卖

印度香烟论支卖
徐复岭
印度香烟的价钞票跟我国差不专门多，但包装有些不同。

印度香烟的包装有20支一盒的，也有10支一盒的。

10支装比20支装体积小了一半，价钞票也少了一半。

这就方便了顾客的购买和携带，专门方便了那些处于流淌状态中的烟民。

不仅如此，许多
香烟摊点还把整盒的香烟拆开，以支为单位卖给顾客。

起初我
对这一现象颇有微词，觉得印度人小气，消费水平低。

但时刻
久了，我发觉我的看法有失公允。

香烟论支出售，对买卖双方
都有利。

有许多烟民出外时并不随身携带香烟。

但若想抽烟怎
么办？有的烟民一时囊中羞涩，没有足够的钞票买成盒的香烟，但又忍不住要过烟瘾如何办？论支出售便为他们提供了便利。

本人就有这方面的亲躯体验，尝到了其中的“甜头”。

在印度，因多为高温炎热天气，为节约体力少出汗，外出时带的东西越
少越好，既然街上有散包的烟卖，香烟就不用随身带了。

在旅
途中、在逛大街时，甚至在两节课的间隙，如果烟瘾上来，只
要上街买上一支香烟就行了。

这是对买方的便利。

而对卖方来
讲，恰恰应了我们中国经商的那句名言：“薄利多销。

”而实
际上，“利”还不一定确实就“薄”，一支香烟的零售价往往
高出其论盒出售时的平均价。

举例来讲，10支装的“金火花”
牌香烟定价21卢比一盒，每支平均才合2．1卢比；但烟摊论支卖时一样要卖到2．5卢比一支，高出平均价0．4卢比。

为方便顾客点燃香烟，香烟摊点都免费提供火柴。

有的摊点则在门口墙上或木柱上悬挂一个通电的点烟用的小装置，利
用电路接通后烧红的金属丝点燃香烟。

原理跟电炉子相同，而
且有一个绝缘的按钮，使用起来安全可靠。

这种小装置我给它
取个名字叫电点烟器。

更为奇特的是我住地的邻近有一个公共
汽车站，站旁有一个售烟亭，亭前紧靠候车棚的柱子上挂着一
盘草绳。

卖烟的印度老人营业时就把这草绳点燃，但只冒烟不
起明火。

开始我还以为是用它熏赶蚊子呢，当我看到有人对着
它点燃香烟时，才豁然活泼，明白了它的真正用途。

Indian Chief Leads Fight to Keep Selling Cigarettes
MASTIC, N.Y. —Down by the lapping waters of Great South Bay, the Indian chief stared up at the trees swaying in the wind. Then he squi nted: Was that a surveillance camera on top of that utility pole?
Probably not, but Harry Wallace, chief of the Unkechaug Nation, say s he has good reason to be watching his back —and his tribe’s —clo sely.
He and several other owners of shops that sell cigarettes on the tiny Poospatuck reservation on the South Shore of Long Island, where the U nkechaugs are based, have been sued by the City of New York. The city claims that this Indian enclave —the closest reservation to New York C ity —has become a “tax evasion haven”and a drain on the city’s co ffers.
The Bloomberg administration says the city and the state lose more t han $1 billion a year in tax revenue because of what it calls bootleg ciga rettes distributed on Indian reservations in New York. Of that amount, the administration contends, $195 million represents the city’s share, and of ficials blame the Unkechaug Nation reservation for most of that.
New York City officials say millions of cartons of untaxed cigarettes are sold every year by Poospatuck retailers to bootleggers who smuggle them into the city to resell for about $5 a pack, not the $8 or $9 charge d by New York retailers who pay the state and city taxes of $4.25 a pac k.
As part of their legal challenge, city lawyers have asked a federal ju dge to block the smoke shops from selling untaxed cigarettes to non-India ns without collecting state and city taxes from them.
Answering these claims is the Unkechaug chief, Mr. Wallace, 55, wh o was born in Queens, went to Dartmouth and was a lawyer in private p ractice in Manhattan before moving to the reservation and opening the Po ospatuck smoke shop.
But he has been outspoken in defending his tribe, arguing that cigare tte sales are the only viable economic engine on the 55 acres of sovereig n territory. He calls the city’s suit an attack on legitimate Indian liveliho od, and the result of elected officials feeling the economic pinch and bla ming budget woes on the smallest reservation in the state.
“They’re picking on us because they think we’re this little tribe with no means to defend ourselves,”he said. “Bloomberg needs a scape goat, so he blames us for the city’s deficit, instead of criticizing the fina ncial markets.”
Lawyers for the smoke shop owners have requested a dismissal of th e suit, arguing that the court does not have jurisdiction in sovereign territ ory, Mr. Wallace said. He is not a defendant in the suit, though he was named in a similar suit that was filed in 2006 by the owner of the Grist edes supermarket chain.
Though Mr. Wallace grew up in the Bayside and Little Neck sections of Queens, his family nurtured his Indian identity, taking him often to vi sit his uncles on the reservation. He chose Dartmouth, he said, because it had as its founding mission the education of Indians, and he helped esta blish a group on campus called Native Americans at Dartmouth.
Later, at New York Law School in Manhattan, he helped found the I ndian Law Committee and wrote a thesis on Indian land claims. In the 1 980s, he worked as a lawyer concentrating on cases involving landlord-ten ant disputes, real estate, personal injury and American Indian discriminatio n issues.
Mr. Wallace said he grew more interested in Indian issues after marr ying Margo Thunderbird, a daughter of Chief Thunderbird of the Southam pton-based Shinnecock Nation. The couple have two daughters. In 1991, h e moved to a plot of land belonging to his mother on the Poospatuck res ervation, nestled on the banks of the Mastic River. “It changed my life
because I knew I was going to get into issues affecting the reservation,”he said.
Mr. Wallace opened the reservation’s first full-service smoke shop, t o “show the community that we could develop an economy separate and distinct from the state and that it could be done the right way.”
Other reservation residents followed his lead and also opened shops, transforming cigarette sales into a booming business as state and local tax es have driven up the cost to smokers. Of the 450 Poospatuck tribe mem bers, 275 live on the reservation, a network of narrow streets with small houses, tidy modular homes and ramshackle trailers.
On a recent weekday, the reservation looked like a bustling cigarette shopping outlet. Signs for smoke shops were posted everywhere, and disc ounted cartons were sold from drive-through windows. An employee held a huge sign and directed a line of traffic to parking spots.
According to state law, nontribe members who buy cigarettes on rese rvations are supposed to report and pay the taxes on those purchases. Leg islators have been trying for years to force tribal smoke shops to collect t axes on sales to non-Indians, but the tribes have refused, citing their statu s as sovereign nations.
The State Department of Taxation and Finance says the Poospatuck c igarette trade grew to 11.3 million cartons in 2007, from 406,000 cartons in 1996.
Mr. Wallace calls the estimates by the city and state drastically inflat ed.
Mr. Wallace, who said the number of smoke shops on the reservation has increased to 14 from 6 in the past couple of years, said he could n ot provide specific sales and revenue figures for the shops because he do es not monitor each store’s accounting.
Mr. Wallace said his own sales of untaxed cigarettes had declined in recent years, but would not provide specific numbers.
Mr. Wallace said he and the tribal council are working to establish g round rules to curb abuses, such as barring phone or Internet cigarette sal es and prohibiting residents of the reservation from selling cigarettes unles s they have a store. He has also proposed setting sales limits and monito ring sales volume by working with the cigarette wholesalers that sell to t he reservation.
But in the end, he says, tribal leaders lack strong enforcement power s over the smoke shops, partly because they do not have their own polic e department.
While he has called the Suffolk County Police to help with lawbreak ers on the reservation in the past, he said he is reluctant to do so now b ecause of heightened tensions between the tribe and the county. “We can’t ask them help us enforce our council decisions, because now all they c are about is tobacco and taxation —they just want to come in and shut everything down,”he said.
As he spoke, Mr. Wallace moved aside a candle he lights to mask t he smell of cigarettes. Though he himself is a smoker perpetually trying t o quit, he explained that cigarettes are helping to breathe economic life b ack into his tribe. The tribal leaders require cigarette retailers to pay into a fund that goes to improve housing for tribal members and to provide money for college.
Mr. Wallace calls the challenges to cigarette sales the latest in the hi storical shortchanging of his tribe and its attempts at economic self-suffici ency. Though hundreds of acres of land has been taken from the Unkech aug Nation, he said, it has managed to retain a foothold because of longs tanding political and cultural ties and strong trading and intertribal relation ships.
As other commercial enterprises have fallen away, about the only thi ngs tribe members have left are their sovereignty and the right to conduct tax-free business, he said. “For Bloomberg, this is about his budget defi cit, but for us, this is survival,”he said. “This is sovereign territory, an d they are not going to collect a nickel without our consent.”。