The [Irish] Government plans to introduce 'plain packaging' carrying only graphic health warnings rather than the current brand designs will provide the smugglers with a massive boost in profits, customs and garda sources say.Police and border forces have a habit of saying inconvenient things like that. UK police chiefs warn of the same, along with their rank and file, and the concerns of our UK customs officials line up the same too. Perhaps they're all tobacco industry front groups or something.
The Irish Indy continues.
They estimate that Border-based Provo smugglers are importing around €90m worth of tobacco products a year, mainly from the Far East. Based on the experience of Australia, the first and only country to bring in the plain packaging, they estimate the IRA-controlled trade here could boom to around €120m in value.Kerching for the Provos!
Officers say plain packaging will make the smugglers' jobs a whole lot easier as in future they won't have to repack several brands at their hidden factories along the border.
One said: "Once plain packs come in, the smugglers won't have to go the trouble of repackaging dozens of different brands as all cigarettes will legally come in drab brown boxes with just a small space left for the brand name. All the smugglers will have to do is simply reprint the brand name."Well, duh! Only a
So the IRA seem equally as enthusiastic as Indonesian {cough} businessmen who quite simply can't wait for plain packaging to increase their criminal profits.
He even punched the air as he mocked PM David Cameron, cheering: "Plain packaging... I support the UK government! ...We will make more money. We can make it cheaper but sell for the same price. It's good for you, good for me."
You have to wonder at the cognitive dissonance required for any politician to take the word of self-interested, career-perpetuating tobacco control industry lobbyists over and above the clear and converging opinions presented by law enforcement agencies and criminals alike as to the undoubted negative consequences of plain packaging. Loopy conspiracy theorists around the world would stand and applaud their capacity for credulous brainlessness.
You also have to marvel at (or, more accurately, be disgusted by) the hideous sight of a tobacco control industry actively aiding and abetting criminal gangs and former IRA terrorists while denigrating police forces as tobacco company shills.
I'll say it again. We here are firmly the law-abiding and on the side of the angels. Never doubt that.
If you - like me - feel very uncomfortable about the IRA getting rich on the back of inept government policy, why not send a message to your MP and double dare him/her to say the police are lying and criminals are making it all up. Their reply would be interesting.
