Tax-free cigarettes fuel illegal trade
The sale of tax-free cigarettes to Indian reservations in New York has played a major role in the millions of dollars made in the cigarette bootlegging trade, according to an investigation released last week by the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D. C.
The study by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that two thirds of all the cigarettes sold last year to New York’s Indian reservations — 6.4 billion cigarettes — were supplied by America’s top three tobacco firms: Philip Morris USA, Lorillard and R. J. Reynolds. The report said they made these sales “despite ample evidence that those sales fuel a billion-dollar black market.”
Part of the series on cigarette smuggling, Tobacco Underground, the report says that bootlegging fuels “corruption, organized crime and terrorism, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product.”
Bootleggers and online merchants, the report said, have netted an estimated $500 million from New York sales since 2000.
Cigarette sales to Indian reservations by Philip Morris, Lorillard and R. J. Reynolds make up more than 25 percent of the three companies’ combined sales in New York.
— Michael Beebe
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