NYC looks to bump tobacco from prime retail space Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 6:12 pm, Tuesday, March 19, 2013 NEW YORK (AP) — Walk into any convenience store or gas station in the country, and chances are the cigarettes will be in roughly the same spot: at eye level, right behind the cash register. Tobacco companies have worked hard, and paid handsomely, to ensure that cigarette displays occupy the retail equivalent of prime real estate. The rule would effectively require merchants to keep tobacco products in closed cabinets or drawers, rather than on the colorful displays, dubbed "power walls," that are familiar just about everywhere in the U.S. A second bill would take aim at the system of discounts and incentives that manufacturers have long used to woo retail customers and keep merchants happy. Tobacco companies and convenience store owners have assailed both proposals as unfair and maybe unconstitutional. Scientists at the nonprofit research firm RTI International recently published the results of an experiment in which they had 1,200 young people take virtual shopping trips through computerized convenience stories. The New York supermarket chain Price Choppers decided on its own in 2006 to move its cigarette stocks off regular shelves and into closed cabinets that resemble refrigerator cases with frosted glass. [...] sales have indeed declined, but she said the company doesn't know whether that is due to customers going elsewhere for their fix or maybe quitting because of other factors, such as a subsequent big increase in the state cigarette tax.