Posted on 10/01/2013 9:08:27 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Early Sept. 13, three men involved in a robbery tried to run over a Warren police officer in a minivan that, according to police, had an estimated $10,000 worth of merchandise. Two of the men were shot trying to flee.
However, the loot wasn't cash or jewelry. Instead, police said they were after cigarettes, which Michael LaFaive, fiscal policy analyst at the Mackinac Center For Public Policy calls "gold bars."
"It happens all the time," said Lt. Heidi Metz of the Warren Police Department. "Almost all tobacco stores have security systems. They've been targeted."
They have been targeted, LaFaive said, because the high taxes on cigarettes inflates their value.
In 1947, Michigan’s cigarette excise tax rate was three cents a pack, which when adjusted for inflation would be 31 cents today. The cigarette tax in Michigan is $2 a pack.
"Cigarettes are often more attractive to robbers than cash registers and safes because they don't need to be opened or unbolted from counters," LaFaive said. "A window is smashed and cigarettes are lifted. The incentive here is provided by lawmakers who have helped make them more valuable to thieves than they would otherwise be through tax policy. By artificially lifting the price of cigarettes by $2 a pack lawmakers stimulate demand by thieves for trafficking in the stolen product. This also increases the attractiveness of robbing wholesalers and retailers because the state-mandated tax stamp (evidencing taxes have been paid) is already on the smokes. That makes it easier to pass them off elsewhere as the Real McCoy."
With some of the highest cigarette taxes in the nation, it is estimated that 29 percent of cigarettes in Michigan are smuggled.
Dale Brown, commander of Detroit private security company, CSG Security, said protecting cigarette distributors has become their "bread and butter."
"These cigarette distributors in this region hire staff as bodyguards for their trucks making deliveries," Brown said. "The only reason they afford this expense is because they have to."
Brown said cigarette deliveries need private protection or the trucks will be robbed.
"You turn your head for a minute, they are on you," he said. "They are going to strike. They are going to get robbed, guaranteed. It's definitely lucrative. It's an unprotected resource of a high value product that can easily be redistributed and sold elsewhere. The level of violence also increased."
For example, Admiral Discount Tobacco stores were robbed at gunpoint in May in Wyoming and in Manistee County in January of 2012, according to media reports.
A spokeswoman for Admiral Tobacco store refused to comment.
So when you tax them out of existence, where are you going to get your mega-slush fund money from to piss away on crony payoffs, funding un-American activities, and supporting perversion? You gonna tax Gerbils and buttplugs then?
While smuggling is a time honored way of keeping the tax man out of your pocket, cigarette robbery is just as bad as any other form of theft.
Anybody know what a carton of smokes costs now? Retail & black market?
/johnny
Obviously with high cigarette taxes bootlegging them is a growth industry for organized crime. However ordinary citizens are becoming bootleggers in states like Minnesota where the price of cigarettes is nearly double that of surrounding states. In border cities like East Grand Forks and Moorehead, smokers can just drive a few blocks to buy their smokes in North Dakota where the cost per pack is half that in Minnesota. I am certain that smoke shops in Wisconsin, Iowa and South Dakota are also seeing increased business from Minnesota smokers dodging the high prices back home.
Fifty years ago, author Pat Frank (”Alas Babylon”) wrote a postnuclear survival manual in which he stated,
“The day may come when a pound of tobacco is worth more than a pound of gold.”
He also recommended stocking up on .22lr `bricks’ as an alternate currency.
Anyway, lots of smokers out there. Demand, meet supply.
The small Korean store a mile from us charges around $9.00 a pack.(WA)
“Anybody know what a carton of smokes costs now? Retail & black market?”
-
Retail,MA, about $90.00-—I don’t know about black market.
I was in line at the supermarket last week. The lady in front of me bought a carton of Marlboros. $50.
I do not think our tax is as high as Michigan.
Legal retail in NYC is just north of $140/carton
Legal retail of the same product, exported to AFG, is $4/Carton (That includes shipping costs)
So, figure $136 of the NY $140 is tax, is one form or another
WOW!
According to Answers.com the retail price for a carton in Mich is about $60 a carton. Back in the 60s I should have bought a warehouse full of ‘em at $2.50/carton.
Can’t grow it too well in SF Bay Area, but finally grew a few pitiful little plants that are now drying in the garage.
“Anybody know what a carton of smokes costs now?”
Texas, $40-42, it varies, carton of Pall Mall longs, regular not menthol.
What is AFG?
A country in the middle east - perhaps you have heard of it.
“Afghanistan”
;)
Remember the days past when you can slot in a quarter or two
and pull the knob for a pack of smokes? Look what Big Govt has done to flux everything up.
Cigarette smuggling from Kentucky to Chicago is a HUGE business. A Carton of Marlboro sells legally in Kentucky for $40 a carton, while that same carton costs $100 or MORE in Chicago.
With those kinds of margins, it can pay BIG to make the run on the weekend. Many people do just that, and sell out of the trunk..
Further, they are making the mob's life so much easier. The biggest proponent of higher cigarette taxes is organized crime.
Without government, creating markets for them, the mafia might have to go out and get real jobs.
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