"Illegal Smokes"

Submitted today to the Brantford Expositor___

Every once in a while, an editorial such as Christina Blizzard’s rants about the “dangers” of black market cigarettes (“Revenue and lives up in smoke”, April 10). The motives are usually easy to discern, if not the logic. It’s not about native sovereignty; it’s about nicotine addiction among young children, she claims. Somehow, it is believed that teenage smoking can be reduced by drafting convenience store clerks as unpaid babysitters, an extension of moms “watchful eye”. The problem, of course is that the age verification stickers on the cash registers, and the tax inflated prices of regulated tobacco does not discourage teen smoking, but merely shifts it underground and beyond the view of caregivers.

No doubt, having the government relieve caregivers of their parental authority and responsibility is the bottom line for some, but this alone does not explain a crusade aimed not at tobacco, but specifically against cheaper, unlicensed cigarettes.

There is, of course the “lost tax revenue”; public service propaganda designed to recruit the average taxpayer as a stakeholder in defense of the tobacco cartel, despite the fact that the state can always compensate for “lost taxes” by looting someone else. So who are the real beneficiaries of this hand wringing over the “illegal trade” in smokes, and whose interests are really at stake? Why, it’s the tobacco cartel itself, and its efforts to use the state to restrain the informal, underground trade in cigarettes. It’s a turf war, all in the name of “the children”, of course.

Indeed, Illegal tobacco is big business. But legal tobacco, protected by regulations and licensing, is an even bigger business with the tax funded resources to suppress its competitors. Supported by a coalition of retail, state sponsored charities and corporate interests, big tobacco mounts an impressive “public health” campaign that attempts to teach us all about how a drop in their market share is not just bad for your health, but a threat to western civilization itself.

As the formal, regulated tobacco cartel collapses under its own weight, native “smoke shacks”, as they are called, are part of the process of reindustrialization, of reduced overhead and less burdened supply chains and networks. It is the free market, seeping through the cracks of the corporate state.