Posted on 07/14/2009 10:51:40 AM PDT by theruleshavechanged
As taxes on cigarettes have climbed in some jurisdictions, the shipping of untaxed smokes has become big business, authorities say. For example, New York City slaps $1.50 onto the state's $2.75 cigarette tax, and in Fairfax County the state and local tax combined is 80 cents.
Meanwhile, Chinese counterfeiters have seized the opportunity for profit and have been flooding the market with hundreds of millions of fake cigarettes, according to U.S. Customs estimates.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
I feel safer.
“fake cigs” doubt it
Untaxed cigs.
Tobacco and lead...
Were they labeled MaLRboLo?
That's right. Exported cigs being reexported back to the US through mail order channels, but without the govt getting its share of the loot.
Indeed. These ARE Philip Morris cigarettes, the real deal. Getting them out of port is easy - getting them back in isn’t. It’s a common play - exporters have been doing it for years.
Now we seem to be doing it with all sorts of stuff.. booze, cigarettes, presidents
Right, they’re not fake cigs, they just ain’t Marloboros. The Chinese should just call them Smoky Dragon brand or Uncle Wong’s Oyster or something like that and relieve themselves of patent suits as well as tax evasion accusations.
That’s my guess too.
Real Marlboros are probably plenty cheap if you buy them overseas without any tax.
Well if President Bush didn’t stand up for American business interests against ChiComm counterfeiting, the unaccomplished Ivy League lawyer certainly isn’t about to.
The owner of this building is Chinese - owns the largest pipe mfg in the world according to their sign. They use a lot of chinese contractors and they all are smoking chinese cigs I have no idea where they get them but I doubt they pay taxes anyway.
Time for ALL tob. cos. to refuse to ship any smokes to N.Y.etc. Let the state sweat it out.
Could see this one coming.
You wouldn’t want to be smoking Chinese cigs, guaranteed.
Formaldehyde would be one of the more benign “additives” that you’d find.
A table produced by the World Health Organization (maybe a couple years old) shows that one pack of Marlboros or an "equivalent international brand" costs about $1.70 in Argentina. As much as I'd love to spend some time in Buenos Aires, I have a feeling I can track down a cheaper pack.
In China, an international brand costs about $1.57, which is sneaking down into my price range. The same thing in Ghana will run about a buck-forty. Cigs in Egypt look to be about $1.17, and those in Georgia are a dollar even. But we can do better than that.
The cheapest "international brand" smokes are to be found in Indonesia, where even fetuses are known to light up every now and then. A pack in the steamy Southeast Asian nation will run you a cool $.62. I probably have enough in my couch cushions for at least a couple.
But enough of this hoity-toity "name brand" crap. Let's look at some prices for the hard stuff-- the kind of violent cigarettes that leave open sores in the mouths and throats of all those who dare to inhale.
A pack of the local brand in Brazil runs about $.88, and in Colombia you can pick one up for about $.64. But don't pay those exorbitant prices-- head to Azerbaijan and pick up a pack of what I'm sure are the smoothest, tastiest cigarettes you've ever had... for a whopping $.33.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that Kazakhstan's government recently raised the price of a pack of off-brand smokes to a minimum of $.32. At that price, you almost can't afford not to smoke.
But don't say I didn't warn you about the open sores.
Why would formaldehyde be added to cigarettes?
For what reason?
Preservative?
Seriously, I’m not sure what to believe about the “chemicals in cigarettes”; the anti-smoking sites have a list of some 4000 chemicals.
But we know from the pet food poisoning that Chinese standards
are not as, shall we say, “strict”, as our own FDA.
The 12 million number sounds impressive but in reality this is about 2 steel shipping containers of cigarettes.
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