As if the RCMP in Canada doesn't have their hands full these days between busting marijuana "Grow-Ops" in BC and protecting politicians to the tune of almost $1 Billion dollars at the upcoming G8 & G20 Summits...now they have to wage a war on "contraband" tobacco too!I feel something is amiss in the CBC article I've attached to this story. There seems to be no mention in the article of the part First Nations play in the illegal tabacco game.
Is this intentional on the part of CBC? Are they being too politically correct in not mentioning the flow of "untaxed" tabacco from First Nation reserves into the marketplace?Aside from the health issues, both the tabacco industry AND Government are missing out on billions in lost revenue. Well...perhaps not the industry per se...but the small retailer suffers a great deal from loss of sales. Many convenience stores are being forced to close due to the unrestricted flow of illicit tabacco. BUT..this is a monster the Government itself created by granting tax free tabacco to First Nations people on their reserves. The inherent poverty on many of these reserves have lead to the present profitabilty for natives to use their status for fiscal gain. Who could blame them?Please read the attached CBC article I have posted in conjunction with the information below....
Why is there no mention of First Nations in the mainstream media article?Contraband cigarettes becoming a national normPaul McLaughlin TorontoNo question, I was slightly nervous. After all, I was about to commit a criminal act. "Got any cheap smokes?" I asked a scruffy guy sitting in a grungy coffee shop on Toronto's Queen Street. I approached him after watching him brazenly counting a large wad of cash in a place that seemed filled with lost and desperate souls."How much do you want," he asked, nonchalantly."One pack."
Figure. Plastic baggies of 200 cigarettes, often without health warnings, can be purchased in most major cities for as little as $8-$10. Photo by: CMAJ "Three bucks," he said, a bit more than a third of what a pack of 20 cigarettes would have cost me in a store. He fished the untaxed contraband out of an inside pocket in his dirty raincoat.The entire brief transaction was conducted in plain view of the coffee shop staff and about 20 customers. Neither the buyer nor I made any effort to camouflage what we were doing.Called DK's, the cellophane-wrapped red package had "Manufactured by King Enterprises, LLC Akwesasne Mohawk Territory" embossed on one side and a health warning from the US Surgeon General on the other.King Enterprises, located on the US side of the Akwesasne Reserve (which straddles Ontario, Quebec and New York state), is licensed by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Council to sell cigarettes in the US domestic market only.
Its license specifically states "exclusive of Canada."Although cheaper than a latte at Starbucks, my deal was no bargain compared with the one Cynthia Callard, the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, obtained on a recent trip to the Tyendinaga Reserve, near Belleville, Ont. "We bought 200 cigarettes [the equivalent of 10 small packages], in a plastic baggie, for $8, as opposed to about $80 in a store."It's clearly become extremely easy to buy contraband tobacco on the streets of Canada's major cities. The coffee shop where I shopped was just 4 blocks from the Eaton Centre, in an area known for drugs and prostitution. I was directed to the dealer by way of a simple inquiry on the street.There's also no doubt it's become a nation-wide phenomenon. RCMP customs and excise unit Sargeant Jim Power says contraband tobacco sales have surged in Newfoundland and Labrador.
In November 2005, an extensive police operation dismantled a sizable cigarette contraband ring operating mainly in Quebec and Western Canada. Large quantities of tobacco and manufacturing equipment were seized during 80 raids that took place in Vancouver, Calgary, Hamilton, Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières and Montréal. A 2006 study by Imperial Tobacco — Tobacco Product Illicit Trade Phenomena — found that approximately 1 in 4 cigarettes smoked in Ontario and Quebec were illegal.In late April (at press deadline), a coalition of 70 organizations launched a campaign to convince various levels of government to implement a crackdown on contraband tobacco, including stiff measures designed to curb the production and sale of cheap cigarettes on native reserves (see page 1569).Inexpensive cigarettes can be readily obtained by all and sundry on First Nations' territory, although, lawfully, only residents of the reserve and status Indians are entitled to purchase them. Occasionally, cigarettes available on reserves are professionally packaged and contain standard health warnings. But usually they come in clear plastic bags."Since 2001, we have seen a 1700% increase in the number of tobacco products the RCMP has seized," says Superintendent Joe Oliver, director of the RCMP's customs and excise program, who's been investigating smuggling since the early 90s. "In 2001, we seized around 29000 cartons. Last year, we seized 502000."Although law enforcement agencies are primarily concerned about tobacco smuggling from a criminal perspective, particularly the involvement of organized crime, they're also concerned about the potential health impacts from access to inexpensive cigarettes, says Power.
Yet, whether contraband cigarettes might be more dangerous, because of the potential inclusion of unknown substances (Box 1), is almost a non sequitur to the experts. Smoking any kind of cigarettes, contraband or otherwise, is hazardous, Callard says.The unchecked expansion of contraband cigarette sales has meant an economic windfall for smoke shops on First Nation reserves such as Kahnawake, Six Nations, and Tyendinaga Reserves. $6 contraband cigarettes
It is a commercial strip unique in Canada. On a short stretch of highway crossing this Mohawk reserve, one smoke shack after another beckons with signs advertising the low price of $6 for a plastic baggie holding 200 cigarettes.
Some shops opt for such native-inspired names as Wigwam and Bear's Claw; Another Dam Cigarette Store pokes fun at the proliferation of the businesses. Even the computer store offers a daily special on cigarettes.
The unchecked expansion of contraband cigarette sales has meant an economic windfall for this community of 9,000, just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. An RCMP report published last week said there were 125 known contraband smoke shops in Kahnawake in 2006 -- more than anywhere else in Canada -- with new locations opening all the time.
Shop owners can be seen driving Mercedes and Cadillac Escalades, and the Grand Chief boasts cigarette sales have eliminated unemployment. Nationally, the illegal trade is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to the RCMP.
But the business comes with a significant cost. The cut-rate cigarettes make smoking affordable for children both on and off the reserve. The head of Imperial Tobacco Canada cited evidence last week that as many as 70% of the cigarette butts found in some Quebec schoolyards are illegal. Governments are losing out on $1.6-billion a year in taxes. And even Kahnawake Grand Chief Mike Delisle, while defending the Mohawks' right to sell tax-free tobacco, acknowledges that the lure of easy money has attracted organized crime to his community. "The infiltration now of outside influence and forces and organized crime -- gangsterism as they call it --it really can't be denied," Chief Delisle said in an interview.
The Mohawk police force, known as the Peacekeepers, are seeking out these elements "to have them disposed of from our community," he said.
Kahnawake smoke shops aren't worried about tough enforcement talk
That apparently is not enough for the RCMP and federal Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, who have announced a new push to stop the trade in illicit cigarettes. The Minister singled out Kahnawake as well as the Six Nations and Tyendinaga reserves in Ontario as particular hot spots. In the smoke shops of Kahnawake last week, nobody was too worried about the tough talk from Ottawa.
"It's none of Quebec's business or Canada's business. We don't bother them," said one seller, who insisted on anonymity. "They're supposed to stay in their canoe and we stay in ours, and we don't cross over." Like others in the trade, he predicted that any enforcement action by outside police would end badly. "There's no tension right now, but if there is, there are going to be funerals on both sides, off the reserve and on the reserve."
The 1990 Oka crisis, which left one provincial police officer dead at nearby Kanesatake and prompted a lengthy Mohawk blockade of the Mercier Bridge next to Kahnawake, is never far from authorities' minds when considering how to tackle crime here.
Two years before Oka, an RCMP raid on Kahnawake tobacco vendors led to 17 arrests and the seizure of $450,000 worth of tobacco products. It also triggered a 29-hour armed standoff when, in retaliation, Mohawks blocked highways through Kahnawake.
Since those clashes, the cigarette trade has been left to grow unfettered. Cuts in federal and provincial tobacco taxes in 1994 temporarily reduced demand for contraband, but it has surged back as taxes returned to previous levels.
Contraband cigarette sales have topped 50 million cartons per year
In 2006, the RCMP seized a record 456,333 cartons across Canada. That was a 16-fold increase from 2001, but still a tiny fraction of last year's estimated illegal trade of 50 million cartons. Some of the cigarettes are being produced in facilities on Kahnawake, but the RCMP says most come from illicit manufacturers on the U. S. side of the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve, which straddles the borders of Ontario, Quebec and New York State.
"These cigarettes come from different manufacturing operations, ranging from small ad hoc operations to fully equipped manufacturing plants involving serious organized crime groups," the RCMP's Contraband Tobacco Enforcement Strategy says. It adds that an estimated 105 organized-crime groups are known to be involved in the illegal tobacco trade nationwide and notes "a growing disregard for the law and escalating violence within the contraband tobacco trade."
Federal and provincial governments have no business trying to regulate native tabacco sales
John Stacey, the owner of Kahnawake Tobacco Manufacturing, said the federal and provincial governments have no business trying to regulate the native tobacco trade, even if almost all his customers are non-natives. "Everything we do, they want their cut, and they want us to ask permission. That's not the rules over here."
Mr. Stacey has carved out a niche among the scores of other Kahnawake smoke shacks by hiring employees who speak French, the mother tongue of most customers.
He portrays the Mohawk tobacco trade as deeply rooted and integral to the Mohawk identity. "Indians and tobacco are like oil and Arabs," he said. "To us the plant is sacred." He also cautions against police intervention: "Maybe they should think twice before coming in. We're ready to defend our right."
Mr. Delisle, the Grand Chief, recognizes that something needs to be done to control the current tobacco free-for-all. At the moment, anybody on the reserve can open a smoke shack and sell cigarettes.
Rules, he said, would have to be set and enforced by the aboriginals themselves. He talked of creating a Mohawk regulatory body to patrol the industry and said he is in contact with other aboriginal communities about co-ordinating efforts.
"If [outside governments] have identified now for 25 years that the majority of the problem rests in First Nations territory, why can't they formally understand that the majority of the answers must rest in First Nations territory as well?" he asked.
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