Cigarette smuggling case winds down
Federal prosecutors are wrapping up -- without going to trial -- an investigation of eight people accused of smuggling millions of dollars worth of cigarettes from North Idaho to tribal smoke shops in western Washington. A trial date was cancelled Friday with guilty pleas from four final defendants, including accused ringleader Louie Mahoney, of Plummer, Idaho. The latest guilty pleas came e...
Ban cigarettes from school campuses
Everyone claims they believe school children shouldn't smoke. Everyone claims adults should set good examples for school children. But not everyone wants to back up their words with action. On Wednesday, April 18, something inexplicable happened in the Education Committee of the Tennessee Senate - two local senators, Bill Ketron and Jim Tracy, voted to kill a ban on smoking on school grounds. (...
JT completes Gallaher takeover
Japan Tobacco finished the takeover of Britain's Gallaher Group for $ 15 billion Wednesday, both sides said, in the biggest Japanese overseas acquisition ever. The move also allows Japan Tobacco Inc., the world's third-largest cigarette company, to expand outside of Japan, which has seen declining smoking rates. The takeover of Gallaher, the maker of Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges cigarettes, ...
Agency sued over seized cigarettes
Five Kentucky-based wholesalers and one based in Southern Indiana are suing the Kentucky Revenue Department, alleging that cigarettes they are distributing are being unfairly seized. The wholesalers and their trade association, the Kentucky Tobacco & Candy Association, claim the state is taking packs on which the 30-cent tax was properly paid because machines that affix the tax stamps miss some...
Smokers Stock Up Across State Line
BETHANY, Mo. -- Iowa's recent cigarette sales tax hike has turned out to be a boon for Missouri businesses. More than two weeks ago, Iowa raised the tax by $1 a pack to $1.36. Missouri's tax is 17 cents per pack. Supporters said the extra tax money would both help pay for health care and cut down on smoking. It has also resulted in many smokers shopping across the state line for cigarettes. ...
Illegal cigarettes up in smoke under tough new campaign
Law enforcement agencies in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho Friday destroyed more than 200,000 packs of smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes in the battle against the illicit tobacco trade in Vietnam. The burnt cigarettes, worth over VND1 billion (US$62,309) and bearing the Jet and Hero brand names, came under the radar to be confiscated since last October. The two brands make up some 91 perce...
Agency sued over seized cigarettes
Five Kentucky-based wholesalers and one based in Southern Indiana are suing the Kentucky Revenue Department, alleging that cigarettes they are distributing are being unfairly seized. The wholesalers and their trade association, the Kentucky Tobacco & Candy Association, claim the state is taking packs on which the 30-cent tax was properly paid because machines that affix the tax stamps miss som...
Dan Walters: Taxes fed illegal sale of smokes
California's bad habit of settling political conflicts with blockbuster ballot measures began in 1978 with Proposition 13, the property tax limitation whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly three decades later. By 1988, a decade later, the syndrome was in full flower, with several dozen high-profile measures proposed. Not all qualified for the ballot, but tens of millions of dollars -- bi...
Philip Morris didn't deliberately boost nicotine
The recent Harvard University report that concluded Philip Morris USA and other tobacco companies have deliberately increased the amount of nicotine that smokers get from cigarettes over the past seven years, if true, raises legitimate public and scientific concerns. ("Help is smoke screen for global profit," by Allan M. Brandt, March 1). News of this report has increased the volume of those vo...
Chips to fish out the fake cigarettes
Every cigarette pack made in the UK will contain an electronic chip in future allowing Customs and other law enforcers to distinguish between legal and counterfeit cigarettes. The main tobacco companies, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher are paying for the initiative including providing hundreds of hand-held electronic readers to Customs. The industry estimates that som...
