Business groups vow to fight mayor's cigarette bills. Cap on smoke sellers has newsstands, bodegas and convenience stores up in arms.

Crain's New York reports:

Mayor Bill de Blasio lit a fire under the city’s cigarette sellers last week, proposing to reduce their number and increase the price of a pack.

Newsstands, bodegas, convenience stores and other retailers will fight the five bills he is sending to the City Council.

Unveiled at a press conference with the American Heart Association, the bills would raise the minimum price of cigarettes to $13 a pack from $10.50, ban pharmacies from selling tobacco products and require e-cigarette sellers to be licensed. The number of tobacco and e-cigarette licenses would be capped and eventually cut in half.

But retailers say smokers would buy from illegal street sellers instead. Indeed, many already do, to avoid steep city and state tobacco taxes. Ignacio Castillo, who owns five bodegas in the Bronx and Yonkers, said his stores now only sell one or two cartons of cigarettes a week, down from 10 or 15 before a spate of tax hikes in the 2000s.

Comrade De Blasio wants more unemployment.