Higher cigarette taxes boon to organised crime

Higher taxes aren’t generally a path to economic growth and job creation. Higher cigarette taxes, however, are increasingly boosting at least one sector of the economy, organized crime.

‘Smuggled cigarettes have become the new currency of organized crime, and a lot of these criminal organizations are finding that it’s more profitable than illegal narcotics,’ Rich Marianos, the retired Assistant Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, recently noted.

Marianos said that black market tobacco smuggling has become “a high-profit, low-risk criminal enterprise. Compared to drug offenses where there’s a mandatory minimum sentence, there’s no penalties out there for the cigarette trafficker.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/20/Higher-Cigarette-Taxes-Boon-to-Organized-Crime