| UICC GLOBALink Presents... |
|
The Tobacco Reference Guide |
| by David Moyer, MD. |
| | Chapter 31 Tobacco exports, imports and smuggling |
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| | Tobacco exports, imports and smuggling: Smuggling |
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| | There has been a steady increase in the number of missing cigarettes. In 1994, |
| | 910,000 million cigarettes were exported but only 586,000 million imported, a |
| | difference of 324,000 million. After deducting 45,000 million for legitimate duty free |
| | sales, there are still almost 280,000 million cigarettes missing. The only plausible |
| | explanation is smuggling. At a conservatively estimated average duty on these |
| | cigarettes of only US$1/pack (and it is much, much higher in most developed |
| | countries), it represents revenue of more than US$16,200 million being lost annually |
| | by governments. |
| | Quote from UICC Tobacco Control Fact Sheet, Cigarette Smuggling |
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| | Antwerp, Belgium, is one of the main distribution points for American cigarettes. In |
| | Spain, Winston is the most popular foreign brand, and 60% of its sales there are |
| | contraband. In 1996, 2.3 billion Winston cigarettes worth $200 million were smuggled |
| | into Spain. A cargo ship from Antwerp with 160 million Winstons was seized by |
| | Spanish police in January 1997; it went to Spain despite shipping documents |
| | indicating that the cigarettes were bound for Senegal in West Africa. |
| | New York Times, August 25, 1997, p. B2 |
| | tobacco reference guideg (artefact pour saut |
| | In the European Union, the market for contraband cigarettes is about 60 billion per |
| | year, resulting in about $6 billion per year in lost tax revenue. |
| | Abstract S13/2, 10th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, Beijing, 1997 |
| | tobacco reference guideg (artefact pour saut |
| | By 1993 between a quarter and a third of all cigarettes consumed in Canada were |
| | smuggled in from the United States to avoid Canada's high taxes. There was strong |
| | evidence that the tobacco manufacturers promoted the smuggling. In 1994, taxes |
| | were rolled back, and smoking rates began to increase for the first time in decades; in |
| | Quebec and Ontario, retail prices plummeted from $47 to $23 a carton. |
| | JAMA, May 28, 1997, p. 1652 |
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| | Monday, July 24, 2000 | Page 14 of 18 |
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Last page of this chapter Copyright (©) 2000 - David Moyer - published on UICC GLOBALink |