A sixty five year old store clerk in New Hampshire was fired last month for refusing to sell cigarettes to a twenty year old using an EBT card. The man s foster mother came in to complain, and eventually the store management fired the clerk. It is perfectly legal, after all, to buy cigarettes with government assistance. The incident sparked a debate over the proper use of EBT cards in New Hampshire. The twenty year old penned an op ed in the Concord Monitor defending himself

I wish that my purchase of a pack of cigarettes wasn’t an issue for public debate, but as a recipient of Supplemental Social Security, food stamps and Medicaid benefits, it suddenly seems that it is

Can I spend $5.87 on a pack of cigarettes? Is that okay, I wonder, as tears well in my eyes reading commentators describing people like me as social parasites. Ironically, the same people obsessed with individualism and the free market seem to need to tell individuals how to spend their money. Why do people who are sick or unemployed need to justify their spending habits, simply because they are in receipt of support from their community (transferred via the government in the form of cash)?

I know it is uncommon for even the poor among us not to feign shame and brave endurance in the face of poverty. I will not I’m poor, I’m on welfare, I smoke cigarettes, and I am not a social parasite.

The man s column actually started as an e mail to New Hampshire legislators, which yielded this response from one of his state representatives, Nickolas Levasseur

The debate forming here is not focused on whether or not you are a smoker or what you do with “your money”. Rather, it is centered on whether or not the tax payer dollars you receive should be spent on non essential items which cigarettes certainly are. Indeed, at the heart of the debate is the very question of whether or not those tax payer dollars are truly yours or whether or not the tax payers who provide them are entitled to some say in how they are spent

Some New Hampshire legislators are currently working to reform the state s policy on EBT cards to prevent purchase of non essentials like cigarettes or beer as a result of this incident’s coverage. In fact, the EBT cards can be currently used to withdraw cash, and so purchase any good or service available for cash. One suggestion from the New Hampshire House speaker is to stop allowing the EBT cards to be used as cash cards.

More Reason on welfare

Fyi: starting today, you must be 19 to buy cigarettes in onondaga county

Marlboro cigarettes net worth. kool price in florida. cigarettes shop ‘cheap cigarettes 24×7′

The legal age for purchasing cigarettes and tobacco products in Onondaga County will rise to 19 today.

The county’s Tobacco 19 law forbids the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products to 18 year olds, effectively raising the county’s smoking age to 19. The only exceptions will be sales to 18 year old members of the military.

Stores will have to post signs advertising the new sales age, and vendors caught breaking the law will be subject to fines ranging from $300 to $1,000 for the first violation, and $500 to $1,500 for subsequent offenses.

The measure was passed by the Onondaga County Legislature in January, overriding the veto of County Executive Joanie Mahoney. Advocates say the law will discourage 18 year old high school students from buying smokes and passing them to younger students.

Onondaga County will join Nassau and Suffolk counties, which also have enacted Tobacco 19 laws. The rest of New York’s counties enforce the state’s ban on selling tobacco to customers 17 and younger.