Smokes run about $12 a pack

 in New York these days according to a site I found on the web. That's about $120 per carton.

They also run about $5.50 for the same pack in North Carolina and for that matter about $4.75 in West Virginia.

A while ago I took a run down to Cabelas in Wheeling and noticed an awful lot ot Pennsylvania plates outside of a smoke shop. Seems a lot of Pennsylvanians were pulling in to save a few bucks to feed their habits. Smokes are a lttle more in Pennsylvania.

I can't help but wonder how many people are driving down to either North Carolina or West Virginia in vans or box trucks and picking up huge quantities of cigarettes for resale in New York.

Interstate 95 over the years has a reputation for being a pipeline of narcotics from Florida to points north annd I've heard that a lot of state troopers have nailed a lot of smugglers simply by routine traffic stops for little dopey things like speeding.

While I do not wonder that a cop would cheerfully nail someone for narcotics I am curious if, for example, a Virginia cop would make much of an issue of a van loaded with cigarettes bearing New Jersey plates headed home. After all, we're not talking narcotics here and it's highly likely the guy from Jersey isn't planning on selling cigarettes in Virginia.

I might be wrong here but I think that smuggling cigarettes into New York really isn't all that risky for the guy driving the van up and down the interstate if he doesn't get in too much of a hurry and go like the hammers of hell and get nailed for speeding. The police probably have bigger fish to fry.

People do this, I can tell because I have been ashore in the Big Apple any number of times and have actuallly done business with one of these people.

I was walking up the street with another guy off of another boat from another company and mentioned that my shipmate had handed me $40 to grab him three packs of Marlboro reds. The other guy, an engineer, said to me that he could do a lot better than that and told me to follow him.

He took me into a Mom and Pop store and looked at the clerk and told him I was a freind of his and wanted five packs of Marlboro reds. The appeared on the counter and the clerk simply said to give him $40 which I did. I noticed that the clerk put the money in a cash box instead of the register and at that minute it occurred to me that the smokes were most likely smuggled goods.

Either that or stolen, but I tend to think that they were smuggled in from down south because hijacking a truck is a lot riskier.

When I got back to the boat and gave then to my shipmate I'd have sworn he acted like he won the Powerball lottery.

Still, it proved to me that there is an awful lot of smuggling going on out there to avoid taxes.

Most moonshiners that get caught do not go to jail for making whisky. They get charged with tax evasion which is pretty much what moonshine is. It is untaxed spirits.

You can buy legal moonshine whisky. Georgia Moon is one brand and it really is terrible. I've tasted it. I suppose that for the most part it is sold as a novelty item.

People may get aghast when they think about smuggling to avoid taxes but the truth is Americans have been smugglers since long before we became a country. Prior to our indeppendence we smuggled a lot of things.

Rum, glass, slaves, tea, molasses, you name it. If the Crown taxed it, Americans smuggled it in. The practice has gone on since in one way or another and in this day and age we still smuggle illegal whisky, narcotics, slaves by human traffickers, and a myraid of other things.

My favorite smuggler of all time was a then 91 year old woman.

This old woman had just had her toilet replaced with one of the recently federally mandated one gallon per flush toilets. It didn't work as her outfall plumbing didn't have enough slope to it.

She took a little run up to Canada and smuggled a five gallon per flusher across the border.

What's funny about it is that she was pretty slick. She also bought one more bottle of Canadian whisky than she could bring back duty-free and declared it. She said she needed one more than the duty-free laws permitted so that all of her grandchidren would get one.

When the customs agent told her to just pass on through she told the customs guy she didn't want to do anything illegal but the customs guy assured her it was OK and passed her through.

I'd bet she had to pull over in the next rest area to laugh herself silly. I would have had to.

Smuggling is nothing new.

While virtually every state taxes liquor and tobacco to some extent, it seems that a lot of state governments are greedier than others.

New York City has tried to legislate smoking out of existince but I still see evidence of their failure to do so by seeing smokers and cigarette butts allover the parts of the city I have visited.

Of course, the unintended consequence has been smugglers and criminal activity, neither of which they really have any control over.

Back in the 80s I saw something interesting. I saw a case where the police had a certain amount of control over prostitution. It was illegal but the police decided to have a quiet little talk with the madam and they worked out a deal of sorts whereby the police would not raid the joint in exchange for the madam and the girls so employed obeying a few rules.

The girls were given 'health checks' a couple of times a week, the brothel was honestly run and there was no rough stuff. The rules were adhered to simply because if they were disobeyed the police would shut the joint down.

In return the police would bust any hookers that tried to ply their trade outside of the protected brothel. The madam had an intelligence network that shamed the KGB and found out about competition as soon as it appeared and would call the chief of police who would have the competing pavement princess jailed or run out of town.

All of this served a purpose and that was for the local police to have at least some control over prostitution to keep the violence, more serious crime and disease out of things. When I look back on it they were actually doing the public a service by the way they handled things.

The deal went on for many years until one of the local church activist preachers raised cain with the state police and forced the hand of the local department to close the place down.

Shortly after prostitution returned but it with no control on things the police were unable to keep the drugs, violence and disease out of things. I guess the preacher and his little group never figured on that happening.

Back to New York City. I wonder how many packs of legal versus illegal smokes are sold there in any given day. It would be interesting to know how much they are actually averaging per pack sold legally and illegally.

Right now the excise taxes on smokes in NYC total $5.85. The city has added a $1.50 tax to the state tax which is $4.35 per pack of 20.

When you consider that you can legally buy a pack in North Carolina for less than half that, even after paying taxes on them there it is no wonder that someone would enter the racket. North Carolina really isn't too worried about what someone does with the cigarettes they purchased there because North Carolina has had their taxes paid. They have their money.

I suppose a North Carolina cop really isn't too interested in busting a New York cigarette smuggler that has legally purchased smokes there because his paycheck likely comes from the tax money his state has collected. No use biting the hand that feeds you. Most likely unless the driver is really hauling ass or is drunk the cop is likely simply to tell the smuggler to have a good day and send him on his merry way.

As far as Joe Smoker in Brooklyn goes, he could care less if the city gets their tax money if he can save a few bucks by purchasing his smokes at One-Eye Bob's kiosk for three bucks less than at the local legal smokeshop. Joe Smoker gets his butts and saves a few bucks and that is that.

It would be interesting to find out how many members of New York's Finest get their smokes from One-Eye Bob's. Probably quite a few. Many of them may even press Old One-Eye for a discount. Who knows?

How much of this that goes on is incalculable and as much as the city officials rant and rave and threaten violators with fines and imprisonment something like this is probably largely ignored. It's quite possible that one or more of the ranters and ravers get their smokes free from Old One-Eye. Old One-Eye ain't stupid.

It would be interesting to be able to calculate the incalculable and figure out how much the Big Apple is being cheated out of in cigarette taxes daily by smugglers. My guess is that it's a bunch.

As for the Mayor of the Big Apple's plan to make people stop smoking by taxing it to death, it didn't look to me like it was working out all that well. I saw plenty of smokers there a couple of weeks ago.

The little Mom and Pop store was still open, too and my shipmate reported that Marlboro Reds there were still eight bucks a pack.

 

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