Colorado smuggling to rocket with tobacco tax hike

An initiative that may appear on Colorado’s November’s ballot would, if adopted, nearly triple the state’s current cigarette excise tax. This, we believe the evidence shows, will usher in a wave of cigarette smuggling and other undesirable consequences.

Voters should think twice before adopting this tax increase. Research shows high excise taxes invite scofflaws to traffic in illicit cigarettes, encourage corruption among public officials and trigger violence against people, property and police.

We created a statistical model in 2008 to measure how many packs of cigarettes are smuggled into or out of American states and have updated it routinely since then. In our latest analysis, which uses data through 2013, we find that Colorado has a relatively low smuggling rate of about 12 percent. Most of the smuggling comes from what we call “casual” smuggling.

The casual smuggler is the Coloradan who crosses into a different city, county, state or taxing jurisdiction to buy cigarettes, or buys them online. The key is that the person buys cigarettes for his or her own use. Contrast this with “commercial” smuggling, which is an organized crime that brings in truckloads of cigarettes from distant locales to be sold illegally in Colorado. This happens all over the country — for example, cigarettes with Virginia tax stamps have beenconfiscated in California. (A tax stamp is evidence that the pack is subject to the taxing authority of a particular state.)
http://completecolorado.com/pagetwo/2016/08/05/colorado-smuggling-to-rocket-with-tobacco-tax-hike/