NEW YORK (AP) — New York City and four states that had filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service announced a settlement Monday in which the agency agreed it would destroy packages of cigarettes sent illegally to the United States from other countries.
The city and California had initially filed the lawsuit in 2019, and were joined in 2020 by Connecticut, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
“We were not going to stand idly by as foreign shippers circumvented federal law in an effort to avoid billions in taxes and hook underage kids on nicotine,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a statement.
In a statement, the Postal Service said while it “considers that it has always been in full compliance with federal law regarding the handling of cigarette packages in international mail, we do support the goals of the settlement agreement, and for that reason we have decided to resolve this lawsuit, and to work cooperatively with all of the parties to this case to advance those goals.”
In filing the suit in federal court in Brooklyn, the plaintiffs said the Postal Service wasn’t doing enough to enforce the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking law of 2010, particularly in regards to international mailing. The law prohibits the mailing of cigarettes in most cases.