Entirely Predictable

Criminal Gangs Exploit the Ignorance of Politicians

We have blogged on previous occasions warning of a crime wave about to come.  That particular tsunami has now struck.  Cigarettes are now the coin-du-jour of the underworld.  This development has been entirely caused by the government of New Zealand.  It is the unintended consequence of hubris and folly.

The gummint is trying to make New Zealand tobacco smoke-free by 2025.  Its tactic of choice is progressively to tax tobacco and cigarettes so as to make them expensive luxury items which only the rich can afford.  We and others have warned that this unenlightened approach would have the entirely predictable consequence of a crime wave, where hoods and the desperate rock into local convenience stores to steal tobacco.  And so it has come to pass.  And it will get worse.

This from Stuff:

A lucrative black market for cigarettes is fuelling an increase in armed robberies, with criminals targeting dairies and stealing tobacco products to order.  Some dairy owners are toying with the idea of pulling cigarettes from their shelves, but the decision is not an easy one with tobacco products making up a large amount of their business.

In the last seven weeks, robbers have targeted at least 17 Christchurch businesses, including dairies, pubs and bakeries. That compares to 12 in the first five months of the year.  The offenders have generally been males, aged in their mid to late teens. They commonly wore disguises and carried weapons, including guns, hammers, knives and axes.

Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Ford said he believed many of the robbers were stealing to order rather than for personal use.  "There appears to be a strong black market for tobacco. It is a very valuable commodity. They [the robbers] are taking as much as they can."  The price of tobacco products in New Zealand has climbed steadily over the last decade as a result of tax increases. A pack of 20 cigarettes is expected to cost about $30 by 2020.

Retail NZ spokesman Greg Harford said robberies were an "ongoing issue nationally" and some people were "getting hurt and feeling threatened".

We reiterate what we have said before on the matter.  This black market is solely a creation of stupid, benighted government policies.  As the excise tax on tobacco is rising, the price of cigarettes is pushed up, making them more valuable.

Secondly, the cigarettes remain on shelf and available to the public.  Ergo, since they are now the most valuable item in store, they become a new currency for criminals--and, in particular, criminal gangs.

Thirdly, this criminal "trade" will be linked to the demand for scarce, highly priced narcotics such as meth.  When you crave P, but have no money in your bank account and no more possessions to sell, just walk into your local convenience store, wave a machete, intimidate the store keeper with menace, grab the smokes and, instantly you have an underworld currency with which you can purchase meth for consumption.  It's as if the storekeepers were pinning up $50 notes around the store, free for the taking.

Each increase in the excise tax will be followed by a bigger, deeper, higher wave of crime.  As a result the only institutions becoming stronger, more powerful, and more controlling will be the criminal gangs.  The wowsers "cure" creates societal damage far worse than the original problem.

New Zealand is not alone.  The same pattern is playing out throughout the West as the "Ban Brigade" has implemented more and more restrictive polices against tobacco and tobacco products.  We recall the laymen's definition of insanity: endless repetition of the same mistake marks one as insane.  By this definition Western governments and their wowser interest groups ought to have been packed off to the asylum years ago.

It is ironic that the politician who pushed this folly more than any other in New Zealand is Tariana Turia.  She did so because of the disproportionate number of Maori in poor health due to tobacco smoking.  Her commitment to "her people" led her down the track of legislating ever higher taxes on tobacco, so as to put them out of the monetary reach of smoking Maori.   In other words, it was a racially inspired policy.

But since Maori in New Zealand are over-represented in the criminal underworld and criminal gangs, "her people" are creaming it with the current government policies on tobacco.  Criminal and desperate Maori have been presented with a form of currency readily available and accessible in every convenience store in the country.  Maori are now able to move beyond tobacco addiction to the real stuff, meth.  Associate Minister of Health, Tariana Turia--by this one stroke--has done more to damage the future of her people than anything else.  She has done more to empower and enrich criminal gangs than any other politician in living memory.

Well-meaning--doubtless. Destructive of her people--most certainly.

Ronald Reagan's perception was correct: the most dangerous words in the English language are, "I am from the Government and I am here to help."