[Jonathon Spectre]

Welcome to the War on (Some) Drugs v2.0.

[Fraulein]

$7.50 a pack? Geez, I just purchased a carton of Marlboro Lights at a local Texaco station here in Tennessee for $25.99...

[Fraulein]

[Dialup Llama]

>The crackdown is evidence that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is serious in his "campaign against tobacco,"

If Bloomberg really were in a serious campaign against deadly tobacco, he would make it illegal. What Bloomberg is really serious about is increasing taxes falsely using the rhetoric of public health as a pretext.

[alloysteel]

And this was just the shipments they caught. A vast multiple of that number must be getting through.

Nu Yorekers shall NEVER have to pay full price for cigarettes if they are willing to seek unconventional outlets.

[TomGuy]

the pile seized in the crackdown will earn the city nearly $14,000, said Martha Stark, the city finance commissioner.

$14k earnings. And the sting operation probably cost $100k or more in equipment, personnel, time, etc. And the result was about 1200 cartons. 1200 cartons, and there are probably a few hundred thousand cartons blackmarketed each week.

At this rate, NYC will need to raise beer and burger taxes just to pay for the negative revenues their stings on tobacco blackmarketing are costing the city.

[kitkat]

"The city's Department of Finance will auction the seized cigarettes to
wholesalers.

The cigarettes typically sell at auction for about $10 a carton, and the pile
seized in the crackdown will earn the city nearly $14,000, said Martha Stark,
the city finance commissioner."

The City of New York is SELLING cigarettes? WHOA! I thought cigarettes were bad for our health? Why don't they destroy them? What hypocrits those liberals are. MAKE MONEY, MAKE MONEY, INCREASE TAXES.

I paid $28 dollars a carton at the Indian reservation for True Menthol 100s. That's $2.80 a pack. I'm going to NYC next January and you can be sure I'll be packing LOTS of cigs for my stay there.

[zeugma]

One might also note that this announcement by the city isn't really that spectacular. The writer tried to make it so by the way the numbers were reported...

The city seized 11,871 packs - or 237,420 individual cigarettes - from 40 unlicensed sellers between February 2001 and February 2002...

What that really says is that they siezed on average 29 cartons per 'unlicensed seller' over a year long period. That's a little more than one carton of cigarettes every 2 weeks. There's an impressive use of tax dollars!

[AGreatPer]

I don't know if I should post this, but I really don't think it will matter. I have contacts in South Carolina. Here is what they are doing in NY City. They load up a tractor trailor with about 27,000 lbs of cigs. They base in NJ and rent 4 mini-vans. From there they do what they call "hot spotting" to sell cigs in the city.

They get about $4 a pack which is a 100% profit, less expenses. They go to a corner or an isolated spot in the city. After they hang a shingle, "$4 per pack", within 5 minutes people are like flies. "We stay no longer than 30-60 minutes in a spot, then move on to a new one."

Several times the cops have seen them and moved on. One cop came up after he changed clothes and bought 5 carton.

Screw you Bloomberg.

[KineticKitty]

"But smoker advocates say black-market sales will only grow in New York, where a tax hike has pushed cigarettes to $7.50 a pack"

Glad You don't live there huh? Man even as an X smoker this is JUST WRONG. I don't blame New Yorkers one bit for seeking out lower cost cigarettes.

[TightSqueeze]

The city seized 11,871 packs - or 237,420 individual cigarettes - from 40 unlicensed sellers between February 2001 and February 2002, said Pansy Mullings, enforcement chief of the Department of Consumer Affairs.

I will lay odds that there is a insider group of sophisticated doughnut jockey’s working on getting these cigarettes back on the street as we speak.

[SheLion]

Roll your own! I roll a beautiful carton and it costs a little under $8 dollars for a CARTON!!

[BlazingArizona]

If they find pipes, matches and other "smoking paraphernalia" on you during a random search, do you lose your subway token and your rent-controlled apartment?

[Great Dane]

What is cought by police, is a very small portion, and when you think of those smokes being taxfree, it's not much of a loss..... cost of doing business.

[Cobra64]

The city will hit a point of diminishing returns. Quebec tried this about 10 years ago. The black market sucked up demand, little was sold in the straight market, ergo tax revenues actually dropped. Subsequently, the taxes were dropped to "normal" levels." Does anyone ever study economics anymore?

[Davis]

Related article...

http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/739713/posts

[Teacher317]

The city seized 11,871 packs - or 237,420 individual cigarettes - from 40 unlicensed sellers between February 2001 and February 2002, said Pansy Mullings

Less than 1,000 packs per month. (ONE typical gas station will have about 1000 packs at any given time)
Less than ONE unlicensed seller per week.
This netted $14,000, for one year's work, which probably cost NY about $500,000. Sheer genius, since justifying their existence and finding reasons to inrease their budgets are the top functions of every bureaucrat.

[Gabz]

The crackdown is evidence that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is serious in his "campaign against tobacco," said Gretchen Dykstra, the city's commissioner of consumer affairs.

What a crock of BS - the crackdown was started by the Guiliania administration. Bloominidiot didn't have a damn thing to do with it.

I no longer miss the city of my birth.

[Caipirabob]

Rudy Guilianni - Personal strength in the face of crisis. Comforted an entire city. Remembered as a hero.

Michael Bloomberg - Fascist anti-smoking idiot who focused on the "War on smoking" during the "War on terrosism". Remembered as a nitwit.

[gcruse]

" Standing behind a chest-high pile of more than 237,000 seized
cigarettes...
                   ...worth billions of dollars on the street,
                   city officials declared a major victory
                   in the tobacco battles, a wholly-owned
                   subsidiary of the War on Some Drugs
                   so eagerly supported by Americans everywhere."