Huge Expansion in Illicit Cigarettes

The Results From Prohibition Remain

We are all familiar with the downside of prohibition.  When the State makes the ingestion of something illegal, the black market takes over.  Hidden away from "prying eyes" the trade continues and huge profits can be made.  

As the old story has it, when places in Italy banned the breeding of snakes, the numbers of snakes increased exponentially.  Why?  Because the ban made the breeding and trading of snakes expensive and therefore a profitable line of  trade.  We have seen exactly this dynamic take over the importation, manufacture, and distribution of cigarettes in NZ. 

A ten per cent increase in excise duty every year since 2011 has driven New Zealand prices to the second-highest in the South-east Asia/Pacific region, behind only Australia. An average pack might cost $31 in New Zealand, but just $1.62 in Vietnam, $5.29 in China and $6.07 in Korea.

A tobacco industry source said the major companies typically made just a few per cent profit on each cigarette, with three-quarters of the sale price going to the government: "So if you can cut 75 per cent out of your costs, then it can become very lucrative." Each individual cigarette is worth about $1 to the government.  [Stuff]

And so it has come to pass: the importation and sale of cigarettes is now extremely lucrative.

Bloody Hands

The Legacy of Tariana Turia

Most politicians would like to leave a legacy.  Their ego requires it.  In New Zealand, Tariana Turia has wanted to leave one of the most ambitious legacies ever seen.  She decided she wanted to leave New Zealand tobacco-smoke-free by 2025.  It is now 2018: only seven years to go for the aspiring saviour to  be canonised. 

Turia's key technique to achieve this goal was to legislate progressive excise taxes upon tobacco in all its shapes and sizes.  In the December just passed, the price of a pack of 20's was NZ$26.00.  As of January 1st this new year, the excise tax went up by 10 percent, making the new price $28.60.  This annual ten percent increase will continue until 2020.  The present price target then will be over $30.

Does this stop smoking?  Yes and no.  During the time when the prices began to rise under this "stamp out" policy, those already inclined to stop smoking made an extra effort.   They were the "low hanging fruit" if you would.  Now, the price rise impact is having little to no effect on smoking.  It is causing terrible consequences, however.  Aspirant Saint Tariana is not deterred: a little bit of suffering is not a bad thing when you have the lofty goal of making New Zealand tobacco free by 2025.

What are the evil consequences of this utopian policy?

Firstly, the poor face greater hardships.

Messianic Pretenders

Cigarettes The Next Bit-Coin

When governments attempt to mould human behaviour so as to make citizens become more righteous, the state has taken on messianic pretensions.  Such idolatrous rebellion against the Lord of glory goes neither unnoticed, nor unpunished.

When the prohibition of alcohol became the law of the land in the United States--it was a prodigious overreach with pseudo-messianic overtones.  Many Christians were sucked into this spurious social cause.  Prohibition resulted in a "nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933" [Wikipedia].  It also provided a huge boost to the power and influence of crime and criminal gangs.

What the government banned was driven underground into the darkness where the mobsters lurk.

Entirely Predictable

A New Industry

New Zealand has a grandiose scheme.  It was dreamed up by the former co-leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia.  It was supported by the health Nazi's and a legion of do-gooders.  The scheme is to make New Zealand "smoke free" by 2025.  

The key weapon to achieve this idealistic goal is tax.  The government is raising taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products regularly.  This, naturally enough, increases the price of the product in the shops.  Higher price.  Lower demand.  A "smoke free" future beckons.

But, once again, the central planners have overlooked the unintended consequences.  Cigarettes are now so expensive they serve as a hard currency substitute.  Robberies--increasingly forceful and violent--where the object is to grab as many cigarette packets as possible are on the rise.  Why?  Because there is a ready market for them.  They are easy to convert to cash.

The days of being able to swagger into a local dairy and rob the till are fast becoming long gone.  Eftpos and other forms of electronic purchasing has meant that the average contents of the till are reducing by the week.  Not much in there to rob.  But ciggies are becoming an alternative currency--and will become more and more so as the price continues to rise.

Letter From Australia (About the Drug Wars)

Prohibition Makes Perpetual War

Tim Dick
Sydney Morning Herald

. . . One thing is clear from the current strategy in the war on drugs: prohibition is a ruinously expensive failure.

As former AFP commissioner Mick Palmer wrote in 2012: "The reality is that, contrary to frequent assertions, drug law enforcement has had little impact on the Australian drug market. This is true in most countries in the world. In Australia, the police are better resourced than ever, better trained than ever, more effective than ever and yet their impact on the drug trade, on any objective assessment, has been minimal."

The intention of prohibition – making drug consumers criminals – is to stop consumption, but it doesn't work. Because it doesn't, prohibition effectively protects the criminal cartels which deal drugs: no tax, no costly safety standards, no workers' compensation for those in your distribution network.  Those dealers who get caught are usually mules or street-level addicts. Prohibition fills prisons with them and clogs the courts and does 10-fifths of bugger all to reduce addiction.  Yet it is so embedded in the political culture of Australia, the US, and international law, that we ignore sensible and proven alternative ways to reduce the harm to users while bankrupting the murderous criminal syndicates who supply them.

Plain Packaging Has Other Fish to Fry, Not Tobacco

All the Plain Packaging Lobby Really Wants is to Hear Tobacco Companies Squeal

The lessons from Australia are clear: plain cigarette packs may are a dream come true for the counterfeiters and may not even reduce smoking

Christopher Snowdon  
The Telegraph 
January 22, 2015

So much for evidence. With every indicator showing that plain packaging in Australia has been, at best, a damp squib, the campaign for this risible policy was won with the one oft-repeated question: "Why would the tobacco industry spend so much time and money lobbying against plain packaging if it didn’t work?"

Like all rhetorical questions, it is supposed to answer itself: "Because they know that plain packs will deter people from smoking, stupid." The answer is clear, simple and wrong because it confuses profit with volume. Profit margins are bigger on premium brands, which is why big cigarette brands - just the brands, not the cigarettes - are worth billions. Get rid of the branding and many smokers will turn to cheaper brands which have tighter margins.

This point was made by Professor John Britton on the Today programme this morning when he said that plain packaging was likely to lead smokers to switch to cheaper fags. This, he said, “makes tobacco less profitable, which is bad news for the industry and that’s why they’ve been opposing it.” It is rare for an anti-smoking campaigner to state this so explicitly, but with the battle won the truth can be told. It is quite conceivable that plain packaging could harm the industry without reducing its customer base. Indeed, the law of demand suggests that a shift towards cheaper cigarettes could lead to more cigarettes being sold.

Nanny Bloomberg Unmasked

The Witch Who Eats Children

Nanny Bloomberg, when he was mayor of  New York, was always hectoring folk to make them healthy, wealthy and wise.  Nanny passed lots of laws banning things like sugar--all in the effort to prevent people from living in ways that Nanny did not approve.  "It was for their own good," he said, as he departed for fresh pastures and campaigns.

Most New Yorkers, who love the Nanny State, thought that Bloomie was an all-round good guy.  He cared, that's why he passed all these laws telling us when to eat and drink and what profile our noses should assume as we breath the no-longer-free air.  He loves us. 

Except that now Nanny Bloomberg's mask has been stripped off.  He is exposed as an evil witch who kills and eats children.  Eric Garner was choked to death by the New York police whilst being arrested.  For what was he arrested, you ask?  For breaking one of Nanny Bloomberg's laws.  He was selling cigarettes on the street, free of Bloomberg's onerous, prohibitive taxes.  He was a criminal, said the police.  He had a record.  He had been arrested previously 31 times.  For what?  Murder?  Rape? Theft?  No.  He had been arrested 31 times for selling "illegal" cigarettes.  For that he deserved to die. 

you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes.

May we suggest that instead of a criminal, Mr Garner was--in some senses--a patriot.  Here is Douglas Wilson's take on the matter:

Prohibition Always Produces the Same Fruits

Behold the Works of the Health Do Gooders

By David Atherton  
16 Aug 2014
Breitbart News

The European anti-fraud agency OLAF has recently announced that between 2009 and 2013 the European Union (EU) lost €700 million in taxes as smugglers cross into Spain to sell cigarettes at half the prices. 

Two hundred Marlboro in Spain are €47, compared to €18.50 in Gibraltar. However, it is trivial compared to the estimated €10.9 billion lost throughout the EU, with 10 percent of all EU cigarettes being illegal. 

The irony is that many British visitors see Spain as a cheap place to buy cigarettes. By comparison the UK price is an eye watering €120. Between 2006 and 2011, the amount of tobacco imported into Gibraltar tripled and organised crime has exported it to the mainland. It is also one of the pretexts for Spain to hold time-consuming searches of Gibraltar cars in their attempt to pressure the British government into relinquishing control of the territory.

The authorities both sides of the border have been hand-wringing under the mantra that something must be done, however much of it may well be in vain.

Foolish Politicians, Nannies and Wowsers

Prohibition Redux

The old adage from George Santayana runs, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  A corollary is the proverb, a hundred blows on the back of a fool make no impression (Proverbs 17:10), but a word to the wise is sufficient. 

History has illustrated and taught repeatedly that when the state overreaches to ban or criminalise something as contraband (all for our own good, of course), criminals get richer and stronger.  It happens every time.  When governments overreach to ban tobacco and cigarettes, or tax them out of existence, it becomes, in the words of Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. 

This, from Breitbart London:

Drugs as a Health Issue, Not a Crime

Assume the Position

We reproduce below a piece on a serious problem--the over representation of blacks and hispanics in US jails.  This has led to an unfortunate consequence of police profiling of blacks and hispanics in poor neighbourhoods, which in turn has many deleterious additional unintended consequences.   A major contributor to this vortex of bad consequences is the policy of drug prohibition and criminalisation.

H. David Schuringa is  the president of Crossroad Bible Institute, an international discipleship and advocacy agency for prisoners and their families, with headquarters in the United States.  Crossroad Bible Institute is active in New Zealand prisons providing educational material, Bible studies, tutoring, and other support to prisoners. 

Dr Schuringa wrote the following piece in a US blog:

The Annals of Soft-Despotism

A Fillip to Ivory Poaching and Trafficking

The drive to be as god always lurks the heart of every human being.  That, after all, was the original temptation in the Garden of Eden when our first parents fell into sin.  The serpent hissed that if Adam and Eve were to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would not die at all, but would become like God, knowing good and evil for themselves.  (Genesis 3: 4)  Adam and Eve bought the lie.  We, in our turn, were born into the lie, believing it and yearning to live it.

One of the downstream effects is to believe that power and wisdom are conterminous.  This is why the idolatry of statism has such a powerful hold over our hearts and minds.  We are born believing that, as gods, we should have power and dominion and that when we secure power, we will be wise and effective.  We will make things happen--for good, of course, albeit good-as-it-seems-to-us, according to our lights, since we now think that we know good and evil for ourselves, on our own recognisance. 

Usually, what happens, is that we succeed only in magnifying evil and doing more harm.  Take something as prosaic as the protection of elephants and rhinos against extinction.

Unintended Consequences

Prohibition Works Out Well for Criminal Gangs

It is universally acknowledged that Prohibition was a failure in the United States in the 1920's.  Not only did it fail in preventing access to alcohol, it proved a boon for criminal gangs which were able to prosper significantly manufacturing and selling contraband alcohol.  But, as we are well aware, those who do not learn history's lessons are condemned to repeat them.  Consequently, we find many voices clamouring for prohibitions of various kinds in our day.  Dumb and dumber.

As with the Prohibition movement early last century, there are always plenty of social evils to garnish the argument for prohibiting whatever the evil substance du jour  might be.  Tobacco is the biggie at the moment.  New Zealand has a diverse bunch of wowsers who have publicly committed to making New Zealand "smoke free" by 2025.

Sideswipe

Ineffectual Wowsers

. . . The next step, if the Government follows Australia's lead, is to allow cigarettes to be sold only in identical packets - probably a dirty brown, featuring pictorial health warnings even more gruesome that those they already carry. The manufacturer's brand would be permitted only in small type somewhere.

When this rule came into force across the Tasman, a French manufacturer put a line on sale in Europe featuring a kangaroo on the packet and the legend: "Popular in Australia." So much for fun.

John Roughan
NZ Herald

The Fiscal Benefits of Tobacco

Asinine Zealotry

The zealots amongst us are trying to make New Zealand smoke free by 2025.  Why?  Well, it's good for us.  The state knows best.  The gummint is on a moral crusade--being spearheaded by our current nanny-in-chief, Tariana Turia.  She and her Maori parliamentary cohort are all wound up because they believe smoking is a Maori health issue: tobacco addiction rates are much higher amongst Maori than non-Maori.

Rather than do the hard yards of actually reforming Maori society they have opted to take the "easy" road.  Ban tobacco for everyone in the country.  Hell hath no greater fury than a zealous politician trying to engineer redemption by legislating to make us good. 

We confidently predict that as a consequence tobacco growing will rapidly expand in the benign New Zealand climate.

Prohibition, Then and Now

A Pertinent Question

Prohibition was an attempt to protect people from themselves.  It failed miserably.  It was, however, extremely successful in unwittingly aiding and abetting criminal gangs.  The US is still living with the consequences.

The arguments for Prohibition are precisely the same as those now advanced against drugs such as cannabis, heroin, and P.  They are an attempt to protect people from themselves.  They, too, are failing miserably--but, as prohibition demonstrated--they are extremely successful in developing and aiding and abetting criminal gangs.

Only Retired Politicians . . .

The Legalization of Drugs

In the West there is only one country which banned the production and sale of alcohol.  In the nineteen twenties, the United States initiated a policy known as Prohibition which outlawed grog.  It was a miserable failure.  Except for organized crime.  The Mafia went ahead in leaps and bounds.  It moved rapidly to control the illicit alcohol trade and became exceedingly wealthy as a result. 

Banning a substance risks it becoming very valuable, since a diminution in supply increases its market price.  When something becomes both relatively scarce and highly priced, organized criminal gangs get interested. 

One other lesson was on display.  Human beings cannot be controlled as to what they will eat and drink and consume.