The stores sell smokeless and pipe tobacco as well as cartons of cigarettes, stocked floor to ceiling, mostly to non-Indians.
Tribes use their tax-free status to offer discounted prices.
HUD spokesman David Egner said the stores represent a tiny slice of the agency's community development block grants, many of which go to day-care centers, health clinics and water treatment. We can't bar the sale of legal products without congressional authority. The Clinton administration has made reducing teen smoking a priority. It has filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the tobacco industry arguing that the public was deceived about tobacco's health risks. Anti-smoking activists decried the federal funding of smoke shops.