Thursday 27 November 2014

Illicit Tobacco Reaches A New Record In Australia

While the tobacco control industry attempts to keep the tax tap flowing by producing ever more absurd and laughable claims of imagined "evidence" in favour of plain packaging*, the predictable real consequences of their spiteful, ill-conceived and often pointless laws are starting to materialise in Oz.
Illegal tobacco use in Australia is continuing to grow with a new report revealing around one in every seven cigarettes consumed is illegal. 
The latest in a series of reports by KPMG LLP in the UK, Illicit Tobacco in Australia, shows that illegal tobacco use in the last 12 months has increased from 13.5% to 14.3% of total consumption.
Oops. Didn't they say this wouldn't happen?
The mix in the tobacco black market has changed since 2012. The report found that more branded illegal cigarette packs are being smuggled into Australia than ever before. Contraband cigarettes are now the largest component of the black market.
OK, so it's only a 0.8% increase. No biggie, right? Well, not unless you take into account the same survey from last year.
[In] the twelve months to the end of June 2013 (LTM H1 2013), the level of illicit consumption grew from 11.8% to 13.3% of total consumption. 
This is the highest level recorded.
The record just got broken.

This should come as no surprise, of course, since Australia's 7 News reported on an 'explosion' in the counterfeit trade back in July.
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."
You don't have to be a mathematician to work out that the difference between 2012 - when plain packaging was introduced - and now represents around a 21% increase in illicit tobacco supply in just two years! And this, remember, in a country whose neighbours are huge distances away by sea or air and not - like the UK - a mere 21 miles with the convenience of a handy tunnel and free movement between EU nations.

Presented with this concrete and real-world evidence - and with Police and border agents advising of the tangible lure to counterfeiters that plain packs offer - Westminster would be stark staring bonkers to follow Australia on the say-so of notoriously mendacious, tax troughing career prohibitionists and their computer-modelled fantasies, doncha think?

They do have some fans cheering them on, though.


If the Indonesian gangs are sensing an opportunity, you can just imagine how excited Eastern European ones are going to be when if the coalition wave through plain packaging in the pre-election wash-up period, just as they treacherously did with the tobacco display ban.

Truly, then, it will confirm we are governed by imbeciles.

* In no particular order, see 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, & 8


11 comments:

JLTrader said...

I see no point in buying those horrible packages (plain packaging is a nice sounding misnomer) hidden behind shutters just to feed such an insulting government. Every Australian smoker should try to buy as many cigarettes as possible either from 'man with a van' or from abroad, to teach the bastards in government a lesson. At the end of the day, money talks, and antismoking propaganda bull*shit walks...they would realize it if tobacco tax money drops significantly.

Lancashire Radical said...

We should know by now,the Westminster Elite HAVE to obey,whatever cranky issue is waved in front of them.
Very few of them have the guts to confront the health lobby freaks and their
Pharma Backers,they have too many skeletons in their closets to risk a show down ,any MP risking the truth would soon have his/her past indiscretions
trumpeted from the BEEB and other Fabian toilet rolls.
The London Inner Elite will only trim their sails when they too have their collars felt Sadly Freedom and Liberty,at present seems to be well stocked with Winnie The Poos,Puss in Boots and suburban hermits,so we assume the
agony prevails.

jude said...

The rise in the sale of illicit tobacco products, (chop chop is readily available even in my tiny little town in the middle of nowhere), is also a consequence of continually putting up the "sin tax" on tobacco products. In Australia we have some of the most expensive tobacco products in the world, and the morons in government think that people will just keep paying it, (well they do, but many are looking at ways of not paying it, hence the rise in chop chop and the like).


Others choose to not pay any "sin taxes" by switching to vaping, which is another reason why those same morons, with the help of the "useful idiots" in public "health", want to ban vaping.


The government here is full of hypocrites, liars, and thieves, but then, this is the case almost everywhere in the world today.

Geoff Cliff said...

You said it! Hypocrites, liars, thieves, and self-serving, self-righteous or self-important servants of the powers that grant them dominion (and no, I don't mean the electorate, for those days are long gone). The frightening thing to me is that it appears to be global phenomenon. UNidentified powers, UNelected and UNsavoury. WHO could we possibly mean?

mntvernon said...

The illicit trade hasn't been ignored by everyone in the Aussie government:
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/national/a/25610926/cut-ciggie-tax-leyonhjelm-urges-govt/
and the suggested method to combat the black market should give the anti-tobacco spazz attacks.

nisakiman said...

Heh! I loved this comment from Leyonhjelm:

"The best way to deal with them is not by law enforcement because all we
end up with is more police running around in black pyjamas and guns and
jumping out of helicopters," the libertarian senator said.

Which sums up Tobacco Control rather nicely!

Bemused said...

To June 2013 was a 14.4% increase in contraband ( from 11.8 to 13 .5) to 2014 was a 5.9% increase. (13.5 to 14.3)

truckerlyn said...

"Truly, then, it will confirm we are governed by imbeciles."


Don't we know that already? All they do now is continue to prove it, over and over again!

JonathanBagley said...

Lol. Don't you mean convulsions?

JonathanBagley said...

14.3÷11.8=1.21; a 21% rise.

Anto said...

More here: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2014/11/28/plain-packaging-debate-is-back/