New Hampshire store ordered to make tobacco payments or stop supplying machine-made cigarettes

New Hampshire store ordered make tobacco payments

CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire judge has ordered a business that sells loose tobacco to customers who roll their own cigarettes to make payments into a national tobacco settlement fund, or stop selling the tobacco.

Tobacco Haven in Brookline had installed two high-speed cigarette making machines. It would then sell its customers loose tobacco and empty cigarette tubes, then instruct them on how to use the machines to make the equivalent of a carton of cigarettes for less than the retail price.

The state sued in August, asking the court to determine whether the acts make Tobacco Haven into a cigarette manufacturer, obligated to make payments into an escrow fund as part of a landmark national settlement between states and tobacco manufacturers in 1998.

Tobacco Haven argued it wasn’t a manufacturer.