ATF stings put 250M illegal cigarettes on streets

[onehandle]

Source: AP

FALLS CHURCH, Va. – Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation's streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers, an Associated Press review has found.

Authorities say the flood of government-provided smokes — a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City, the smugglers' main destination — leads them to organized crime rings and can even cut off financing for terrorists. The stings by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have yielded about five dozen federal arrests, albeit none on terror charges.

Many of those cigarettes undoubtedly wind up in the mouths of minors, since black market vendors have no reason to turn away teenage purchasers. Despite that, government auditors and anti-tobacco groups want the ATF to do even more.

"Smuggling reduces prices, so it increases use, especially among kids, who are more price-sensitive" in their purchases, said Eric Lindblom, director of policy research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/ap_on_bi_ge/us_cigarette_smuggling

[fasttense]

1. Black markets in this country are growing.

It's the wave of the future because corporations have taken over so much of our resources and they are NOT sharing.

[naaman fletcher]

4. What?

That makes no sense. Black markets ONLY exist due to government action. Government raises taxes too high, there is an incentive for smuggling.

[chrisa]

7. Not entirely true.

There's a black market for human slaves. The government has nothing to do with this. Same with cocaine, rocket launchers, grenades, etc.

[naaman fletcher]

8. The government has everything to do with those.. it's the government that makes them illegal.

If cocaine was not illegal, there would be no black market. Of course, the government banning things can be good i.e. slavery, but still, it's the government that causes black markets, not corporations.

[SteveM]

2. Terrorism and Prohibitionism: so intoxicating you can stumble over your own feet...

All that rhetoric about how "terrorists" get there funding -- through prohibited drugs -- and you end up spilling the very stuff you try to prohibit all over the floor, thinking you can snag some mythical "king-pin" or Osama-Lite when they come 'round to lap it up. Now, prohibitionists have added tobacco to the list and expect it to "fall in line" with their deficient logic.

Mr. Lindblom has only half the formula. "Smuggling reduces prices" for a time. Once the smuggling network is established (and mere legal prohibition has become finalized), prices reverse and go up; an unregulated AND monopolized market has been contrived.

Ganja, gay rights, guns, alcohol, reproductive rights, and now tobacco: dem prohis cain't git 'nuff.

[captain jack]

3. Oh the things groups do to stay funded.

[formercia]

5. They learned this from the Drug Trade.

What's the difference?

[earcandle]

6. Set ups for crime to occur logically cause crimes to occur! We spend our money on this horseshit?

Who is running this country?  A bunch of hateful mean people
out to get innocent people who are deprived to wind up in
their prisons for free labor?   This is a crock.  What ever
can we do to stop these terrible crimes against humanity? 

[Flaneur]

9. I wish they'd do a weed sting like that.

[Flaneur]

10. I wish DEA would follow ATF's example and do a weed sting like that.