New York tax dollars are going up in smoke.
The Hochul administration is shelling out at least $150,000 in taxpayer money to survey New Yorkers about banning the sale of tobacco products — but bizarrely isn’t asking them about banning pot, The Post has learned.
The state Health Department last month began sending out crisp five-dollar bills to targeted residents in a bid to entice roughly 6,000 of them to earn another $20 by filling out a survey about smoking and vaping habits — and the potential for an all-out tobacco prohibition.
“The past few years have shown New Yorkers how important it is to support public health,” says the mailer from Ola Fajobi, a department scientist specializing in tobacco surveillance.
“Open this postcard to learn how you can participate in our important survey and get $20.”
The poll’s 90-plus questions seek input on a variety of health issues and smoking and vaping preferences, including whether survey takers believe smoking tobacco and marijuana could be harmful.
“What is your opinion about a policy that ends the sale of all tobacco products in New York within 10 years?” reads one question.
“What is your opinion about policies that ban the sale of flavored tobacco products like flavored cigars, little cigars, smokeless, tobacco, and hookah?” reads another.
But there isn’t a single query gauging support for an outright ban on weed — even as increasing evidence shows serious health hazards from smoking pot, which the state legalized the sale of in 2021.
“This seems to be a flagrant waste of taxpayer money,” said one Albany insider.
“I never seen people bribed with taxpayer money to take a survey or an agency test market policy initiatives” through such a survey involving the general public. “That is highly unusual.”
State DOH officials declined to say how much the survey will cost, but the $150,000 is the bare minimum, based on the 6,000 participants pocketing cash or a combination of cash and Amazon gift cards.
And that doesn’t include people who threw out the envelopes containing five-dollar bills before opening them, thinking they were junk mail, or pocketed the money without taking the survey.
It also doesn’t include the mailing costs or payments to the nonprofit research organization RTI International for producing the survey.
In April, RTI oversaw a similar anti-tobacco study that solicited input from county legislators and county directors of public health – who were not paid.
Kent Sopris, president of the New York Association of Convenience Store Owners, said state officials would be better off spending tax dollars on crackdowns on cigarettes illegally sold on the black market and underage use of cannabis and tobacco products.
“I think paying people to take surveys instead of putting some money on enforcement is pretty bizzare, and to focus solely on banning tobacco and not marijuana or cannabis kind of the shows the state’s a little backwards here,” he said.
New research from the University of Calgary published last week in Addiction, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, found that adults who misuse cannabis have a 60% higher risk of experiencing their first heart attack, stroke, or other major cardiovascular event.
A massive Danish study based on nearly 7 million health records drew a strong correlation between heavy cannabis use and increased risk of schizophrenia in young men.
Health Department spokesman Cort Ruddy defended the surveys as a means to “prevent more suffering from tobacco,” which has long been linked to lung cancer and other ailments.
“The data from this annual survey will help the department understand current use patterns and plan evidence-based services to prevent initiation by those currently not smoking, encourage cessation for those who currently smoke, and protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke exposure,” he said. “As with all surveys, the questions we ask do not indicate whether the department supports or opposes the policies they highlight.”