BBC Scotland 8.30 tonight (available on Sky 101 for those of you not in the area).

Sam Poling’s documentary on the illicit tobacco trade.

The dual attention of the righteous and HM Treasury have combined to turn a small time one man smuggling business from the channel ports into a multi-billion pound international trade. That went well didn’t it?

Essential viewing for anyone interested in the effects of the righteous nanny state on free trade – the cigarettes these gangs are selling are not the genuine product, they are counterfeit Chinese imports complete with fake tax stamp codes – and full of toxins.

Check the time of this broadcast – listed as being 7.30pm on BBC and 8.30pm on Sky…….

JohnRS January 22, 2011 at 07:59

There’s a saying that repeating the same activity over and over and
expecting a different result is one of the definitions of insanity.

Yet the State regulates and fails, regulates and fails repeatedly. Each
failure being followed by cries for yet more regulation.

How far must the population be subjugated by the bansturbators before we
realise they are actually insane and throw off the yoke of State
oppression?

Smoking
Hot January 19, 2011 at 21:48

Radders … sadly that is not the case. l can give you many instances where
the UKBA have confiscated such amounts and considerably less than those
amounts. lf you are unfortunate enough to have travelled into EU through Dover
Ferries etc with your car and your cigarettes/tobacco are confiscated on the
way back, there is a good chance your vehicle will be confiscated too.

lt isn’t about the confiscation though, it’s about disruption. UKBA can
confiscate both your car and goods simply because they ‘believe’ that the
goods are for a commercial purpose. They need nothing more than that.

Even if you appeal and get your goods and car back, odds are it will take
you 30 days to do so. In the meantime you have been without your vehicle, had
to spend excess monies to get home after the initial seizure, had to spend
more monies to get to work etc, had stress about your appeal.

That’s what l mean when l say disruption. Would you risk buying your goods
from the EU again?

lt is possible but you have to prepare yourself before you go.

Uncle Nick January 19, 2011 at 21:44

“full of toxins”?

So by inference, smoking a cigarette that has been taxed will not expose
someone to toxins? Pass me a pen, I must contact the BMJ at once!

Gloria Smudd
January 19, 2011 at 21:52

Whereas a cigarette that has been taxed is merely expose someone to
‘taxins’. Now which is the lesser of the two evils?

Gloria Smudd
January 19, 2011 at 21:53

(should have been “… taxed will merely expose …”, obviously. It’s late
and I am tired)

Radders January
19, 2011 at 18:48

One doesn’t even have to break the law to defeat these silly taxes. If you
smoke 40 a day, as many do, you will need to replenish some 3,200 ciggies
every 12 weeks. 3,200 is the limit HMRC have set at which they won’t subject
personal shoppers to questioning or seizure. The tax saving in buying these on
the Iberian peninsula is £600 a pop; £2,400 a year. The cost of 4 budget
carrier return flights at under £50 each when booked in advance, and
timetables that allow one to fly out and back on the same day, with a decent
lunch in between, have made Barcelona and Lisbon upscale alternatives to
Calais. And all perfectly legal.

Smoking
Hot January 19, 2011 at 18:20

It will be available on the BBC iPlayer for a week afterwards.

Me January 19, 2011 at 17:12

You can just see the spin can you not “the war on tobacco”.
Just like
“the war on drugs”.
So now not only are the muppets losing the revenue due
to unreasonable taxation they are also soon going to have to fund a tobacco
war as well.
LOL.
It’s not a case of i’m from the government and i’m
here to help it’s more a case of .
Duhhh i’m from the government and i’m
soooooo stooopid.
As the commentator above points out when it comes to
prohibition they never learn.
But then the definition of stupid is when you
make the same mistake twice.

Dave Atherton
January 19, 2011 at 16:39

As the blogosphere’s resident bore on smoking, even the Al Beeb are only
scratching at the surface. For the record class A drugs, cocaine and heroin
are estimated to be worth globally $135 billion and tobacco $500 billion.

The upper estimates of smuggling by HMRC in the UK is 24% of tailor mades
and 63% for hand rolling tobacco. £2 billion at least is lost in taxation. Of
course much of this is legally brought and consumed with day trippers to
Belgium or holiday makers in Spain.

However I was offered a packet of Jin Ling cigarettes the other day. Jin
Ling is based out of Kaliningrad in Russia. They produce 32 billion cigarettes
a year have a 7% European market share and growing . Not one is manufactured,
distributed, or sold legally. Even low tax countries like Greece and Spain
trade them on the black market.

The future looks grim as drive by shootings and gang wars loom on the
horizon.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/tobacco/articles/entry/763/

JuliaM January 19,
2011 at 16:02

They never learnt the lessons of Prohibition, did they?