Australia’s soaring cost of cigarettes is presenting lucrative opportunities for international organised crime groups who are turning to illicit tobacco as a “low-risk and high-reward” trade.
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) says there is growing evidence serious and organised crime cartels are also using the enterprise as a platform for further illicit activities including drug importations and terrorism.
We’ve known prohibitionism enriches criminals longer than we’ve known smoking causes cancer.
I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
We need cigarette free zones…. and laws… many more laws… and government promises to fix it… and naval forces patrolling the seas… but most of all…
DA GUBMINT NEEDS MORE TAXES FROM YOU BITTER CLINGERS
A few mandates will fix this fag problem.
The amount of tax that’s been put on tobacco in Australia is the stuff of the Deep Twilight Zone. In seeking out the “illicit” market, smokers are attempting to avoid being robbed senseless by deranged, voracious government.
This is not rocket science, although it does seem to be beyond the cognitive capabilities of pollies and their nitwit advisers of Public Health. They were warned numerous times that artificially, punitively inflating the cost of tobacco will promote an “illicit” trade. “Don’t be ridiculous”, they screeched. “That’s just Tobacco Industry propaganda”.
The morons in power created the incredibly foreseeable mess and now deflect their sole culpability with falsehoods such as “the illegal tobacco trade may be fuelling terrorism”. It is the virtue signallers that have purposely created the mess.
Whether Lab/Lib/Green/Ind, they are all united in anti-tobacco which was the first contemporary venture into wokeness and the Bully State, intent on “saving lives”… for your own good. The singular point of relief over the last few years of Lib government is that it spared smokers the constant drip of anti-smoking adverts. With the incoming Lab government, the anti-smoking adverts have started up again. The first ad (an old advert) appeared the day following the Lab victory. We’re now into solid wokeness – anti-tobacco, the normality/supremacy of the alphabet mob, and “climate change”.
The gubmnt and its conga line of well-remunerated experts/advisers is going to “save” us good and hard.
But wait… what about a Torres Straits Islander flag on Sydney ‘arbor bridge for all da poor bloody folk transporting “stuff” across da strait in their tinnies?
https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-08/TSI_flag.jpg
ZERO TAXATION would fix it.
Take people off the tax drug.
I have heard of a small shop in a small suburban shopping centre having sales of $30,000 per day. Cash sales only.
It is always the poor unfortunates that end up paying off their supposed government protectors.
Koppers Keep Kriminals away!
The Australian governments do like making money off of people’s vices. Cigarettes, alcohol, gambling. Yep. Got to fleece those addicts.
I prefer to think of them as “poor honest men” (R. Kipling) than organised crime syndicates.
Just business men filling a demand.
They’re better men than the Pfizer board.
Another reason for going to the um, free market tobacconist: purchasing real cigarettes rather than fake ones.
Reports: US to Drastically Reduce Nicotine Content in Cigarettes (Newsmax, 21 Jun)
Meanwhile it’s ironic that lefty governments are increasingly selling weed with such huge levels of THC that mental illness is increasing.
Exactly, Bruce. Ban tobacco but legalize cannabis. You know it makes sense.