States Go to War on Cigarette Smuggling

[windex]

Has anybody ever thought of doing the unthinkable? 8-o to encourage spending!

lower taxes!

Oddly enough, I think you're seeing this here already.

I for one don't really think much of making a modest investment in juice/atomizers/etc every other month or so, given that I used to spent $6-7 a day on cigarettes.

And while I know everybody likes to be CONSPIRACY .. I assure you as a public servant almost no public servants are savvy enough to pull this off for long. Gross incompetence, I've seen. Conspiracy, someone would screw up eventually.

 

[tromboneking]

Has anybody ever thought of doing the unthinkable? 8-o to encourage spending!

lower taxes!

That would be a great idea! The only problem is with the US economy the way it is, a lot of businesses are cutting back, which in turn is causing their employees to cut back, which in turn is causing the economy to suffer (or something like that). If I'm not mistaken, one of the best way to get out of a recession is to spend money. However, how can you spend money on thing when you don't know if you'll even have a job come friday?

 

[dEFinitionofEPIC]

Wouldn't surprise me. I've seen some pretty solid evidence the CIA has been involved in a lot of the drug smuggling over the past 3 decades.

Here Here. Sad but true.... Goverment-the ultimate drug dealer: Makes drugs illegal so the street prices skyrocket. Then uses the DEA to eliminate all the major competitors so they gets most of the profits. How diabolical.... People need to recognize that organized crime runs the country... it is all about money and power.

Interesting point: A week or two ago there was a piece in the media about the military being used in Afghanistan to guard poppy fields. The justification was that they were guarding them so that the drugs didn't get in the hands of the taliban. Haha... yeah, ok.... I believe that...

 

[Boston George]

The only conspiracy is gross incompetence paired with small time greed. Much like no single raindrop causes a flood, a government full of idiots drowns us all.

 

[Sar]

true. All they have to do is publicly declare them unsafe and many will complacently(sp?) return to analogs, some will quit nicotine altogether, and a small handful will get their stuff on the blackmarket and from overseas.

To build more pressure, they can declare second-hand vape to be unsafe too. The non-smoking citizens would be writing their representatives to immediately ban vaping or sales of PVs. That way the government would be simply responding to the needs and demands of the constituents.

This would also be so easy to do. It would only take few very well-placed news reports in media about second-hand vaping dangers. It doesn't matter if it is true or not. Once it is out-there it becomes a fact. By the time the truth comes out, the PV industry would be in shambles.

 

[unknwn]

I found this a little bit ago in a 8/24/09 Rueters article about "deflation"-

....Core inflation may have held at a respectable 1.5 percent, but this is deceptive. U.S. goods inflation has defied gravity in part because of hefty increases in tobacco taxes over the past six months. A 28 percent increase in tobacco prices from a year ago is adding one percent to core goods inflation, according to Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics. .....

Which just reinforces my thought that "it's all about the money".

 

[breno]

Yeah, but prohibition was 70 years ago... Things have changed. I hate to say it, but I think they're capable of doing a much better job today than they did then.

I'm in the UK, I have not bought any UK duty paid cigarettes in the last 10 years, they have tried everything, including crushing smugglers cars.
Smuggling is a mini industry, there are plenty of unemployed people who are happy to do it. Too many officials who are happy to take bribes, you need only one person to let a hundred lorry loads of cigarettes in.
The incentive is to great because of the mount of money they can make,
many custom workers smoke too.
The smugglers are also capable of doing a much better job.


22% of all cigarette smoked in the UK are smuggled hardly a surpise when they are about
£5.25 ( ($8.61) a pack (last year figures) but can be bought for 42p (~70c) a pack in Lithuania.

I found a webpage saying the cops had shut down a warehouse with 100 million cigaarettes destined for the UK sounds like a lot doesn't it!! That was last year, made not a jot of difference.

Same goes for illegal drugs, prohibbition does not work anyone who want them can get them
despite the fortune spent on policing, it they do arrest anyone there are dozens waiting to take his business, I mean drug gangs are basically fighting each other for 'market share'.

It really is utterly pointless and a massive waste of resources as anyone who want them gets them anyway, so what is achieved?

Of course eliquid is much easier to smuggle riduclously easy, apparently a lot of the cigarettes
smuggled into the UK originate in China!!!

 

[ladyraj]

Cigarettes aren't going anywhere the States and Federal Government make more money off tobacco than the tobacco companies do. Tobacco stocks are a great investment during hard economic times as their stable growth over the last 10 years have demonstrated.

For each pack of ciggies that cost $4.50 in Ohio
state excise tax is $1.25,
Federal tax is $1.01,
sales tax is $.33,
MSA state payment is $.55

Which equals $3.14 per pack payment to the government agencies and only $1.36 to the tobacco companies who now must fund the FDA legislation with "user fees". Tobacco retailers must pay fees from 1.000-5,000 to sell tobacco...that also goes to state coffers.

With all of the companies struggling and getting government bailouts...tobacco is funding our government. How can e-cigs compare with the government partnership in tobacco?8-o