THE SMOKER’S DILEMMA
September 2, 2015
by John Mallon
Circumstances have contrived to put smokers in a very awkward situation today. Due to persistent professional lobbying by the various arms of Public Health, cigarettes in Ireland cost twice the European average from all the legal outlets.
However, as is the way of these things, the criminal fraternity have seen their opportunity and they would appear to have ridden to the rescue of the hard-pressed smoker by providing illegal cigarettes all over the country for the European average price or even below it.
Forest Eireann has long argued that increased Government Excise on tobacco yields decreased income from that source because it forces smokers to seek an alternative supplier. When a fifty gram pack of Samson costs ?20.00 in the shop and yet you can get the exact same thing for ?6.00 on the street, you can see where the problem lies. At the stroke of a pen, the Government could put the criminals out of business. All they would need to do is return tobacco product pricing to the EU average, thus removing the profit motive from the handling of the illegal stuff.
But that is just pure common sense so it is unlikely to happen. That leaves a problem though. The power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland is on the point of collapse and it is down to IRA criminality. We know on this island the IRA in it’s various incarnations are the Godfathers of tobacco smuggling. The guaranteed profits from these operations actually fund their continued war against our democracy in both Ireland and the UK.
This then is the real moral dilemma for the victimized smoker. When you opt NOT to be a victim of State racketeering by buying legally in a shop, you are instead either directly or indirectly funding terrorist organisations. Think of it as, “The ballot box in one hand and twenty cigarettes in the other.” Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern both engaged in a lot of real politic when then cajoled all of the parties to sign up for peace in the North. Both leaders knew that the ranks of the paramilitaries on both sides were filled with young men who had only ever known a state of war and their war was funded by criminal activity. Those uniforms on the front line of law enforcement now know this and the unspoken official attitude seems to be to look the other way. After all, isn’t it better to have these men smuggling a few fags instead of bombing the State into violent confusion.
There is little appetite in either London or Dublin to really stamp out the illegal tobacco trade lest it sets the hard men growling once again. But equally both Governments are guilty of pushing their own innocent citizens into the arms of these gangsters by falsely and grossly inflating the price of tobacco as they have done over the last ten years. And it is unsatisfactory now for the very lobbyists who forced our Governments down this track to wash their hands of the resultant criminality and say instead that it is a law and order issue. The lobbying charities and the feeble listening ears in Government are both guilty of conspiring to create the new tobacco smuggling phenomenon.
They in turn though will blame we smokers for buying the cheap stuff rather than obeying their demands of us. In response however, we refuse to be bullied by quasi-charities and lying politicians and the criminals win hands down. This then is the state of play as I write. The retailers are naturally up in arms because by complying and obeying bad laws they all see their business going tits-up. Meanwhile what the Irish Examiner calls “An epidemic of illegal tobacco,” floods the country as we poor smokers are forced to fund the ex-paramilitaries.
The very voices who condemn us for enjoying a smoke also tell us that smoking is a stronger addiction then a heroin habit. This begs two questions. If a heroin junky could buy his stash at half price or less, what do you think he would choose to do? And if smoking is harder than heroin to give up, how the hell are a million smokers to do so overnight? So buying illegal but reasonably priced tobacco contributes to the destabilization of the State, that much is clear. But then again, this is the State that controls the price for the legal supply and lies about ETS.
It’s a moral dilemma but not of our making.
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MICHAEL J. MCFADDEN on September 8, 2015 at 6:11 pm said:
I have one more thought I’d like to add to this thread? a thought about this whole “funding of terrorists” meme.
One thing that all of us have learned to the core over the past twenty years is that the Antismokers lie. They lie virtually every time they open their mouths or dot an “i” in a document. They lie more than Governments and politicians lie, and that’s saying a lot. Most of them do it for money, sponging off the taxpayers and those who give to charities thinking their money is being spent for good causes. And, unfortunately, some of them even do it purely out of idealism, thinking that their lies are justified by the “greater good” they think they are building.
It’s not a greater good though. It’s a world that’s run like a nightmare out of Orwell eventually unless people wake up and realize how their thoughts and emotions are being toyed with by the organized forces with the money and the power to control the media. Now, think for a moment, if you’re a grant-grubbing Antismoker or a tax-hungry politician, what lie could you tell to stop people from fighting back against the tax-racketeers by going to the black market?
Simple: Tell them that every pack of cigarettes and every gram of loose tobacco that they buy on the black market is going to be a contribution to the terrorists who will destroy their countries and kill their children.
Remember: These are the same people who said all they wanted was a non-smoking section on planes and in “family restaurants”; the same people who said that smoking was the most intense addiction in the world but who would turn around five minutes later and say a 50 cent per pack new tax was needed to bring about a higher smoker quit rate; the same people who said they weren’t talking about banning smoking in pubs; the same people who swore that families’ homes would always be inviolate, the same people who said that thirdhand smoke was poisoning babies just like Russian spies (without mentioning that the stated poisoning would take 23 *trillion* years of determined floor licking); the same people who said that a smoking ban in the bars of Helena Montana brought about an instantaneous drop of 60% in heart attacks; the same people who’ll go after the incarcerated mentally ill without the barest twinge of conscience; the same people who see robbing hundreds of thousands of hospitality workers of their lives and livelihoods as nothing more than “unintended consequences” and collateral damage; and the same people who’ve consciously and deliberately built a hate campaign against a helpless minority the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Third Reich and which has resulted in the sort of material that built the Smokers’ Wall Of Hate ( see bit.ly/Wall-Of-Hate )
I never cared for Ronald Reagan when he was President of the United States. But I’ve learned he had some real wisdom at times. Remember when he said that the ten scariest words in the English language were, “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help you.” He was telling the truth. These people can’t be trusted to tell you if 2 is greater than 1, much less convince me that they’re telling the truth about money going to terrorists.
Yes, I’m sure that somewhere, at some time, some individual transaction of some type involving the tobacco black market resulted in some sort of money going to some people who could be described under some vocabulary as terrorists ? and the same could probably be said for the money you’re handing to the company that made your TV or manufactured your local pharmacy’s happy pills. And it most certainly could be said, on a vastly larger scale, of any of the tax money we’ve handed to governments who are now parading smokers as terrorist supporters.
These people lie. They lie with virtually every word they speak on TV and with virtually every comma they enter into a “factsheet” or “report” or even in their formal, peer-reviewed “studies.”
Don’t want to support terrorism? Take the first step and stop supporting the governments that support terrorism ? whether it’s terrorism against Christians, Muslims, Englishmen or Irishmen, or against those who simply don’t toe the party line in every little last aspect of their proper and government-approved personal behavior.
If the governments were TRULY that concerned about black market tobacco money going to the terrorists, the solution is right there at their fingertips: simply tax tobacco at non-criminal levels. Until they do that they deserve no respect and, as far as I’m concerned, they’ll certainly get no respect from me.
