About fifteen percent of the Australian population are still regular smokers and the crime industry was not slow in seeing the opportunity this presented for illicit profits. Smoking prevention laws have driven the retail price of a packet of twenty Marlboro cigarettes to $ 27 and these can be bought overseas fort just three dollars.
Smuggling tobacco is a lot safer than trying to bring narcotics into this country. The penalties are mild compared to what the courts hand down in drug cases and yet the profits are similar. We have now reached the stage where illicit tobacco is hemorrhaging tax revenues of more than $ 294 million a year.
The problem is that it is a still growing industry. Originally, dodgy smokes were being distributed by shady characters in back lanes but now a very open distribution network has emerged. The rumour mill will direct you to some sort of retail business where cartons of foreign branded cigarettes are available from under the counter in defiance of the law. One such illegal store in Bondi was recently raided and the proprietor handed a $ 72,000 fine for selling tobacco without health warnings.
The market is also widening. Not only cartons of cigarettes flowing into this country, but we now have illegal tobacco farms growing the product for distribution outside the tax regime. This is reaching the market as " chop chop " loose leaf which allows smokers to roll their own. A six hectare crop was discovered in March near the Victorian and New South Wales border and valued by law enforcement as worth $ 15.4 million.
This illegal tobacco industry is now no longer concentrated in a few city outlets. Just about every large country town now has a reseller that is well known to the locals. These are harder for the police to take down because they usually only sell to customers who are personally known to them. This is big business, with fleets of delivery trucks taking care of state wide distribution.
There is no mystery about who controls this trade. The proprietors move easily in the upper echelons of society and flaunt their wealth. From time to time the authorities bust an incoming shipment and this features in the nightly news, but that is just a " business expense " in the eyes of the smugglers. A small " inconvenience " that is quickly rectified.
This illegal enterprise is run on similar lines to the Mafia crime empire. The top people have " clean hands " and are not directly involved in day by day operations. The lesser fry are well compensated for prison time and know to keep their mouth shut. It takes skilful police infiltration to break cases.
The sheer volume of imports coming into this country makes intensive inspection of all cargo impossible. X-Raying of entire container loads is increasing, but it is unlikely that we will ever be in a position to check more than a small portion of whatever enters the country. Tobacco products are bulky, but they are usually described on manifests as a product of similar size and weight.
It seems that tobacco contraband is now a well established industry that is impossible to eradicate - as long as we still have smokers in this country.
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