Tobacco.org

• Hot Docs: How the Mohawk tobacco industry caught fire  

Where there’s smoke there’s ire, at least when it comes to critics of the tobacco industry on native reserves, evidenced in Ojibway filmmaker Jeff Dorn’s Smoke Traders.

The TVO-commissioned documentary, which had its world premiere at Hot Docs Thursday, screens again Friday. It will air on TVO this fall.

Dorn, who works at CTV Ottawa, spent three years filming in the Mohawk communities of Akwesasne and Kahnawake, documenting a thriving economy both among cigarette runners and the growing number of native-run cigarette factories and tobacco companies.

The doc starts out with runners making trips across the St. Lawrence River, ferrying duty-free cigarettes from aboriginal land to areas where taxes push up the price of cigarettes. . . .

What was once shadowy enterprise, with smugglers bringing duty-free products from the U.S. to Canadian consumers of black market, tax-free smokes has evolved into a multi-million-dollar industry run by native factory owners who produce cigarettes for tax-free sales on Canadian and U.S. reserves.

“We (Mohawks) control 50 per cent of the industry in Quebec and Ontario,” said Dickson proudly. And if they sell cigarettes to non-natives who come to the reserve to buy them without paying taxes, that’s hardly Rainbow Tobacco’s problem.

As one man says in the doc: “Canada calls it illegal. We call it good business.” . . .

Filmmaker Dorn said he wanted to show another side of native life with Smoke Traders.

“I’m not promoting smoking or tobacco,” said Dorn, who kicked the habit himself just over two months ago.

“The thing that amazed me as an aboriginal man is there’s not much left in the community for people to grab onto and this is something the Mohawks have found. It’s a powerful took and it’s an economic engine. You have an industry that is creating jobs and employment.”

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Chinese men with ‘wrong’ fags get fine  

Sin tax to abet smuggling, say US business groups 

Two top American business groups echoed apprehensions by some Filipino legislators that the Malacañang-backed sin-tax reform bill would abet smuggling, undermine the government’s revenue growth targets and subsequently pose serious threats to national security.

The US Chamber of Commerce and the US-Asean Business Council have asked Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. to consider the supposedly counterproductive and deleterious impact of House Bill (HB) 5727 that seeks to impose 1,000-percent to 1,500-percent tax increase on alcohol and tobacco products.

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Bulgarian customs inspectors seize nearly 5 million illegal cigarettes hidden behind lentils  

A kick in the butt: Is the end near for Benson, Marlboro in India?  

• Cigarette smugglers beat plain packaging laws 

ILLEGAL cigarettes being smuggled into Australia have soared before plain packaging laws start, a Tobacco Inc-funded report claims.

The industry claims the boom is fostering organised crime amid the nation's shooting sprees and bikie wars.

A report to be released today says smuggled counterfeit and contraband cigarettes tripled last year, slashing $1 billion from federal tax coffers.

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Over 300 thousand pieces of illegal cigarettes were seized by officers of Chief Directorate “Combating Organized Crime” 

• Russian Excise Duty Hikes to Spur Contraband – Business  

The rapid rise in alcohol and tobacco excise duties advocated by Russian presidential economic aide Arkady Dvorkovich is likely to increase the number of fake and surrogate products in Russia, alcohol and tobacco business figures polled by Prime news agency said on Wednesday.

In an interview with RIA Novosti on Wednesday, Dvorkovich called for increased alcohol and tobacco excise duties above the planned level.

Industry figures said, however, that the proposal was inexpedient. . . .

Maksim Korolyov, head of the Russian Tobacco news agency, said the share of fake tobacco on the Russian market was small at present, but this could change if the government failed to harmonize tobacco excise duties with member countries of the Customs Union comprising Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

“We can already see the first signs when Belarusian cigarettes are sold in Russian border regions,” he said, adding that an average filtered cigarette pack cost a minimum of 20 rubles in Russia compared with 3-4 rubles in Belarus.

He was echoed by Anatoly Vereshchagin, Japan Tobacco International's communications director in Russia. “Already today there is a considerable imbalance between tobacco price levels in Russia and the Customs Union countries.”

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• Cigarette import curbs likely: End of the road for Camel Marlboro, Benson & Hedges? 

The government is mulling curbs on import of cigarettes and a complete ban on foreign participation in wholesale trading in tobacco and cigarettes.

The move comes two years after India disallowed foreign direct investment in cigarette manufacturing.

The finance ministry has written to the commerce ministry to consider imposing restrictions on cigarette imports in the upcoming foreign trade policy.

"There is a thinking that FDI should be discontinued in wholesale cash and carry also, and that the government should impose restrictions on imports of cigarettes," a government official privy to the development said.

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• Indian cigarette chaos 

On these flatlands that make up the New York side of Akwesasne -— the St. Regis Mohawk reservation — three similar-looking buildings have risen along Frogtown Road. Not counting the tribe's casino and bingo hall, they are the largest commercial structures around. Inside the first, a red warehouse and factory, are stacks and stacks of hundreds of crates of cigarettes with the brand name Native. At the nearby green structure are stocks of cigarettes called Signal. And in the sprawling tan facility down the street, cartons and cartons of Nations Best and Discount are bunched in packages.

Besides the aroma of tobacco, the cigarette companies share other traits. They are federally licensed and regulated, employ dozens of people in a region with high unemployment and are key contributors to the reservation economy, tribal officials say.

Another characteristic has resulted in a problem for the state and local law enforcement authorities. The plants' products lack tax stamps, and are ending up among the tens of millions of confiscated cigarettes piled high in a secure warehouse in Schenectady County leased by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

Because of recent seizures of truckloads, tempers have flared in the tribal government and Mohawk business community in cases that reveal a chaotic enforcement system that may end up costing the state. The cigarettes have been taken by State Police at the direction of district attorneys near the reservation despite a state tax department directive to allow transport of native-made cigarettes from one reservation to another even if they lack $4.35-per-pack stamps and state excise taxes have not been collected on them.

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Ontario C-Stores Applaud Crackdown on Illegal Tobacco Operation 

• HUBER: Tobacco from all nations excluded in trade pact 

At issue * April 2 commentary by Sen. Paul Hornback and Rep. Wilson Stone, "Plans to exclude tobacco from trade pact unfair to state."

The commentary that objected to the Herald-Leader's editorial board's support of the proposed carveout of tobacco from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, known as TPPA, contained misleading information that requires clarification.

Contrary to the implication in the commentary, a tobacco carveout would not apply exclusively to U.S. tobacco, let alone Kentucky tobacco.

TPPA removes tariffs and trade barriers that operate among the partnering countries. A tobacco carveout would apply equally to all tobacco within the TPPA free-trade zone. Removing tobacco from the agreement will not disadvantage U.S. or Kentucky tobacco relative to exports from other countries. It will simply leave tobacco products from all countries in the same competitive position they are in today.

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Senator Who Sought Indian Tobacco-Tax Gets 7 Years on Corruption Charges 

A former state senator who relentlessly attacked the Seneca Nation of Indians and other indigenous communities for selling tax-free cigarettes on Indian reservations has been sentenced to seven years in prisons on corruption charges.

Carl Kruger, an influential state senator from Brooklyn, was sentenced by a federal court judge in New York on April 26, the New York Times reported. Kruger resigned his office in disgrace after pleading guilty last December to corruption charges, including bribery schemes in which he accepted nearly half a million dollars in exchange for taking official action as a senator.

The former state senator reached notoriety in Indian country in New York in 2010 for inserting himself into the judicial process over the state’s controversial plan to force American Indian businesses to collect state taxes on cigarettes they sell on sovereign Indian land to non-Indian customers. . . .

None of the media reports on Kruger’s sentencing mention whether the former senator will be required to pay taxes on the roughly half-a-million dollars in bribes that he accepted.

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Customs swoops on illicit cigarette smuggling syndicate in Western Wholesale Food Market 

Federal Grand Jury Indicts Oak Creek Man For Cigarette Trafficking 

A 40-year-old Oak Creek man is among nine people indicted by a federal grand jury in a case involving contraband cigarette trafficking and the sale of counterfeit cigarette tax stamps.

Mohammed Mazharuddin was charged with conspiracy and contraband cigarette trafficking. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The indictment alleges that the defendants transported unstamped cigarettes from Wisconsin to Illinois in order to evade Illinois state and local taxes, according to a news release.

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