Black-market cigarettes costing NY $20M a month

New York Post ^ | 11/26/2010

[Vigilanteman]

Ever smelled Indonesian cigarettes? I swear they smell just like wildwood flower from my brief (and second hand inhalation only) rock concert days.

[Graybeard58]

IIRC, more than a few of our revered Founding Fathers dabbled in the smuggling trade

Isn't that how the Kennedys got their start?

[riri]

Ah please...I am from New York. The entire state is black market everything. Only state workers, welfare queens and drones play their game. And even many of the welfare queens do cash dealings on the side.

[RFEngineer]

“Black-market cigarettes costing NY $20M a month “

You know, in this holiday season, it would be better to hear positive stories, to wit:

“North Carolina receives unexpected cigarette tax receipt boost”

and

“Entrepreneur makes millions driving a truck”

or

“Santa Claus still coming to visit children of NY smokers who save money AND time buying from convenient street corner cigarette wholesalers”

[patton]

“Government data show that New York state is being smoked out of as much as $20 million a month from all these illegal cigarette purchases — an estimated 7.3 million packs a month sold off the state tax radar.”

~~~~~~

“Sales of taxed cigarettes have plummeted 27 percent since July, when state lawmakers raised the excise tax to $4.35 a pack on top of the city’s tax of $1.50, making the average price of Marlboros here $11.60, with some shops charging as much as $14.”

~~~~~~

$4.35 x 7.3M = $31.755M/Month, not 20. Add in the $1.5/City, and you get $42.705M/month - more than twice what is reported.

[bert]

I would consider southwest Virginia, Weber City to be specific. It is on the Tennessee Virginia border and there are several large businesses that deal in gasoline, cigarettes and lottery tickets.

One could probably place a large order for cash and load them up.

US 23 is a back road up southwest Virginia, South eastern Kentucky and West Virginia...... a corridor right into the heart of the sales territory.

[Iron Munro]

I know that a lot of people who oppose tobacco cheer whenever there is a tax increase on cigarettes, just as they cheered when laws making bars and restaurants cigarette free were passed.

However, to me there is no better example of our over-reaching, intrusive, out-of-control government than the issue of tobacco taxes and tobacco regulation.

Why should a legal product, such as a pack of cigarettes, that cost less than 50 cents to manufacture and deliver to the retail seller, cost $8.00, with $7.50 going to the government as taxes?

Any reasonable person will agree that it should not, but it does. The government can get away with it because many everyday people support the outrageous discriminatory cigarette taxes just because they don’t like the product.

How many supporters of government policy toward tobacco want to see those same policies applied to other products that someone else might not like or approve of?
Just wait until they start taxing Big Macs, Tacos, Pizza, Coca Cola, perfumes, after shave, rock concerts, bags of charcoal and weed eaters the same way.

No, I am not a smoker myself, but I do believe in a smaller, less intrusive government for all, smokers included.

As an afterthought - How many of you know of people who smoke pot and support liberalization of drug laws but go foaming-at-the-mouth rabid when someone lights up a Marlboro?

[newnhdad]

If you have to smoke, I’m guessing it’s worth a daytrip to an indian reservation or to Northern VA to stock up on a few months supply. You’ll be saving almost $100 a carton.

Pretty soon they’ll go after Virgina for their “lax” laws on tobacco like Bloomberg did over “lax” gun laws..

[Calvin Locke]

“...making the average price of Marlboros here $11.60, with
some shops charging as much as $14.”

Ya know, in B-school, one case study was about marketing in
economies where selling individual cigarettes and razor blades
was the norm. Those economies were in third world, oops,
excuse me, "Less Developed" countries.

There's an old joke about putting commies in charge of a desert. In
ten years, you won't be able to find a grain of sand.

It has to be upgraded to "liberals" in general, and despots in particular.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

The Ruling Class would do well to remember that, in the years leading up to the First American Revolution, Smuggling became an honorable profession...

Isn't this how the Kennedy fortune began?

[Lees Swrd]

Yeah history does repeat itself. I walked to the store a lot of times as a kid to buy 2 or 3 cigs people could not afford a whole pack so they bought them 1 or 2 at a time.

[ConservativeChris]

Not a mathematician so if my numbers are wrong, don't bust my chops, but I came up with these:

OK we were told that 7.3M is 23% lost cig sales, that means they should still be selling cigs on the order of like 22M packs a month.

22M x $5.85(just tax on packs)= $128,700,000/month
128700000 x 12 = 1,544,400,000 a year FROM TAXES ON CIGARETTES ALONE?

128M a month?! 1.5B a year?! And they still have money problems? Again these are JUST the taxes on cigs. What is wrong with this pic?

[The Great RJ]

Government nannies have never understood that in response to higher prices the market will either buy less of the good or service OR seek less costly substitutes i.e. the black market. They also forget the lessons of Prohibition where organized crime expanded from their traditional gambling and prostitution enterprises to more profitably selling bootleg booze.

Organized crime today would do well to concentrate on selling cigarettes and soon incandescent light bulbs and perhaps high flow toilets.

[patton]

Actually, it is worse than you think -

A carton cigs cost about $10 to manufacture, ship, and sell.

In NYC, based on the article, they go for $110

That is $100 per carton to the government. Oh, but wait - you get to pay sales tax on the whole price, so that is a total cost of about $120, with $110 to the government.

At 22M packs a month (10 packs to a carton), 12 months a year, we see $2.904 BILLION to NY a year.

[nobdysfool]

I’d forgotten about how wonderful everyone thought Coors was then. I worked at the local Chrysler dealership after school and actually put air shocks on a guys station wagon that did regular runs to Colorado for Coors.

The thing is, the Coors of today, or even the Coors that was sold when they went national, was not and is not the same Coors that we used to have to make those runs to get. I remember what the original Coors tasted like, and the nationally available "Coors" is not that beer.

[mewzilla]

This is costing far more....

(New York) State put freeze on hiring, then added 51,464 people

But state officials hired 51,464 people at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion in salaries, plus fringe benefits, since that decree on July 30, 2008.

Note to Andy Cuomo: If you really wanted to cut spending, you'd need look no further.

[VermiciousKnid]

Bravo! You hit the nail right on the head. But nobody listened way back when, and NOW look where we are.

Regards,

[nobdysfool]

“Costing” the State as if they had any hand in the making and marketing of things.

typical Leftist claim, showing that they believe that all of the money rightfully belongs to them, so anything that lessens their "take" is called a loss. You can't lose something that wasn't yours in the first place...that would be the same as me claiming that someone stole my Rolls Royce. Only problem is, I've never owned a Rolls Royce.

[Oztrich Boy]

Have you tried nicotine patches instead?

[Uncle Ike]

” Have you tried nicotine patches instead? “

Yeah - ya can’t keep the damn things lit....

(Somebody had to say it...)