Plain Cigarette Packaging Boosts Counterfeit and Smuggling: According to a Channel Seven News report about a raid on illegal cigarette sales in a Sydney market, this idea has boosted smuggling and other nefarious activities by about 40 per cent and driven up seizures of sticks from 82 million in 2012 to 200 million last year.
"Authorities blame the surge in counterfeit cigarettes on the introduction of plain packaging two years ago."
Just as the police have been repeatedly warning our government since the hare-brained idea was first mooted.
9 comments:
Lol. Does this mean that if I buy a packet of counterfeit cigarettes in Australia there is a danger that they might explode and kill me? Or, does it mean that the concept that there is no increase in counterfeiting presented a couple of weeks ago by tobacco control has blown up in their faces? - Another thought - Don't you think we should give Tobacco Control a break - We win argument after argument. Nobody can stand being wrong so often as these poor souls are.. This surely amounts to cruelty. This is a disgrace. How dare you be right!
And the result will be that those charged with the responsible stewardship of public monies will look closer and more critically at shrill claims made by these toxic twerps? Not holding my breath....
I wonder how Simple Simon Chapman is going to spin this one? Since it would seem he is an avid follower of yours, DP, no doubt he will see this post. I suspect he may find it a bit trickier to refute than his last feeble attempt at smearing your exposure of the TC charlatans.
They really are pathetic losers. They are drowning in the morass of their never-ending lies, and yet still they try to insist that they command the high ground.
Tossers.
DP, this comes on the heels of a drug bust earlier in the year that also uncovered large-scale tobacco cultivation. The media reported that there were 35,000 tobacco plants:
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/police-seize-35000-tobacco-plants-from-moorabool-plantation/story-fnjuhxh0-1226858499386
However, a government website estimated the haul at 350,000 mature
tobacco plants:
“The haul includes approximately 350,000 mature tobacco
plants with an estimated Excise value of around $15 million.”
https://www.ato.gov.au/Media-centre/Media-releases/ATO-rolls-illegal-tobacco/
That’s super industrial scale cultivation.
The antismoking ferals have two auto responses to a flourishing contraband market. Firstly, deny that a contraband market exists.
Simply claim that a contraband market is a myth created by the “evil” tobacco industry (from the “Us” vs “Them” Chapman playbook). When it becomes impossible for the ferals to deny that a contraband market exists, they scurry to “Plan B”. They then claim that a contraband market has nothing to do with Tobacco Control measures…… with compounded extortionate taxes or “plain packaging”. According to the prohibitionist ferals the contraband market just popped up out of thin air one night solely to thwart the “good” work done by Tobacco Control. These nitwits act shocked with a flourishing contraband market in the face of extortionate taxes and “plain packaging”.
Extortionate taxes, for example, are de facto prohibition for those of low income. In condescension, the government is stating that if a person can afford it, they can keep smoking. But if they’re of low income, tough luck, they’ll be forced to quit. The government is conducting itself like a criminal gang. Consumers seek a remedy from other criminal gangs charging a lower rate. Unreasonable, extortionate taxes are a critical driving force in allowing a contraband market to flourish.
Somewhere in all the fanaticism, the zealotry, the extremism, the activism, one would have hoped that there would be one tiny skerrick…… one
last vestige….a fading glimmer…. of sensibility. But, great expectations, not
so. It would have been thought that seeing evidence of a flourishing contraband market, the antismoking ferals would [finally] surmise that the extortionate taxes have been pushed too far, that it’s time to stop flogging that dead horse. But, in Australia, not so. Rather than saying we’ve pushed this tax issue too far, the government announced it would be hiking excise on tobacco by the largest amount ever, and egged on to do so by the WHO and health and economic “advisers”.
In antismoking zealotry we’re dealing with a mentality made dangerously stupid by acute fixation, megalomania, utopian delusions, and greed. There
is no reasoning with these nut cases. Where these zealot prohibitionist
miscreants are given a red carpet ride by the State, they can only wreak havoc with a society, as should already be glaringly evident.
Re: Snowdon's latest thread on Chapman.
I expect he will come up with something like the news channel and the police officer were both in the pay of Tobacco Companies and none of what they say is true, it is all a scam to discredit him!
Wouldn't put it past any of the TC brigade!!
It would be nice if the UK media had picked up on this or the negative youth smoking statistics from Oz. The BBC did mention plain packs yesterday or rather it allowed a free plug for the measure from Deborah Arnott as part of an article supposedly about reduced rates of smoking and drinking amongst UK school children.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28461530
No bias there then.
"it took more than a dozen officers three hours..."
I wonder if Mr. Chapman has considered the vast cost to the economy of his actions...?
It does not matter what arguments,what results,what reasoning is put forward
the anti smoking lobby rolls on regardless,it gets what it wants,it knows the
oppositition is divided,weak and useless confined to muttering ,twittering and
bleating to the converted,a universal legion of unseen groaners and gaspers
a buzzing swarm of stingless wasps, mention action and the screens go blank
..........bless em !
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