Tobacco Industry: Canada Ontario Contraband

By Jonathan Last updated Nov 24, 2017

So legislators, proud of yourselves?

When the government singles out a minority group that it says is helplessly victimized by a medical condition (addiction far more powerful than heroin supposedly, remember?) and then charges those victims the equivalent of an 800% tax (from $10 base to $90 final) that’s no longer legitimately called “taxation.”

It’s theft.

It’s a crime and I’m sure many Canadian smokers view it as a crime and respond in their turn with a crime of their own. What the government has succeeded in doing then is simply sowing disrespect for the law: the basic promotion of anarchism. And they’ve succeeded in doing that far more effectively than any band of mad-eyed, black-caped, bomb-toting anarchists could ever have dreamed.

So legislators, proud of yourselves?
By Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”

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Retailers protest contraband tobacco
Aug. 16, 2012

TORONTO, Aug. 16 (UPI) — A Canadian retail association in Ontario mounted a campaign Thursday asking smokers to stop buying contraband tobacco and buy legitimate brands.

The Ontario Convenience Stores Association said in a release it had paid for 36 billboards throughout Toronto to remind smokers of the heavy fines they could face for buying untaxed cigarettes.

The vast majority of the contraband cigarettes are sold through Indian reservations in Eastern Ontario that straddle the New York state border and other reservations further west along the Canada-U.S. border.

While fully taxed name brand cartons of 200 cigarettes sell for as much as $90 in stores, the same number of cigarettes can cost as little as $10 from a reservation.

The association also echoed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warning that fines for possession of contraband tobacco fines are steep – as much as $2,500 for 200 cigarettes.

Additionally, despite their various media campaigns, the provincial and federal governments are losing tens of millions of dollars in taxes to the growing black market, various media reports have said in recent months.

The retail association has about 7,500 members in Ontario, and said the number is shrinking.

“Over the past several years, over 1,000 convenience stores have gone out of business, in large part due to the effects of the illegal contraband market on these law-abiding retailers,” the release said.