Tag: tobacco

Australia Tried To Tax Smoking Out of Existence. Now 80% of Tobacco Aussies Consume Is From the Black Market.

The Australian government has spent the last decade introducing steep tax hikes to curb smoking, and, as a result, the country has the most expensive cigarettes in the world. The average price of mainstream cigarettes is 54.99 Australian dollars per pack (about $40). But the eyewatering prices have driven people to the black market.

In 2025, an estimated 80 percent of the tobacco consumed in Australia was illegal, up from 12 percent in 2017, according to new analysis from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The study, which is the first attempt by the Australian government to estimate the size of the black market, found that “prices for legal tobacco products have almost tripled since December 2016 driven by annual tobacco excise increases, while estimated prices of illicit tobacco products have remained relatively constant.” Since 2020, household spending on legal cigarettes and tobacco has almost halved, but between 2017 and 2025, the amount of nicotine consumed in Australia has risen by almost 40 percent.

Meanwhile, between 2016 and 2025, the price of legal cigarettes nearly tripled while tobacco duty revenue more than halved. As a result, the Australian Treasury has downgraded tobacco excise revenue by $8 billion over the next five years in the latest federal budget.

Lower tax revenue is hardly something to mourn, but Australia’s collapsing legal tobacco market has come with a far darker consequence: a severe wave of gang violence, including firebombings and shootings. Since 2023, organized crime groups linked to Australia’s illicit tobacco and vape market have been tied to “more than 200 firebombings,” “at least 3 homicides,” and “multiple other non-fatal violent attacks,” according to the Australian Intelligence Commission.

“It’s hard to see how it could get any worse,” Rohan Pike, a former Australian Federal Police detective and Border Force member, tells Reason. Pike, who created and led Australia’s Illicit Tobacco Strike Team, says the violence is now an “old-fashioned turf war” and that criminal gangs, attracted by the profits, are fighting to control distribution.

Pike says criminal groups are opening pop-up convenience stores, intimidating legitimate retailers into selling their products, and backing up those threats with “firebombings and other types of violence.” Organized crime syndicates have destroyed hundreds of tobacconists, convenience stores, and hospitality venues, forcing legitimate businesses out. “Every part of the tobacco control policy is uncontrolled at the moment,” says Pike.

Public awareness of the black market rose last year when Katie Tangey, a “completely innocent” 27-year-old woman, was killed in Melbourne in a case of mistaken identity linked to the tobacco wars. “We know it is linked to the illegal tobacco trade. That’s one thing we can say with a high degree of certainty,” Detective Inspector Chris Murray told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “This was always our fear, that someone would die as a result of the tobacco wars and unfortunately this has come to fruition.”

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Tariffs, Tobacco, and Policy Whiplash

When politicians talk tough on trade, they usually promise to protect American jobs. But sometimes those gestures do the opposite. The Trump administration’s proposed 100 percent tariff on large cigars imported from Nicaragua is a case in point. According to my latest research, the tariff would shrink US GDP by $1.26 billion, reduce total output by $2.06 billion, eliminate nearly 18,000 jobs, and cost state and local governments $95 million in tax revenue.

There is no domestic industry to protect. The United States produces almost no large cigars, which are rolled by hand from long tobacco leaves and sold through tobacconists, cigar lounges, and small brick-and-mortar shops. Roughly 60 percent of all 430 million cigars imported each year come from Nicaragua. Doubling landed import costs would devastate the 3,500 retailers and 50,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on that trade.

Worse, this tariff reverses one of the administration’s genuine policy successes—its early effort to limit the Food and Drug Administration’s overreach into small-batch cigars and other low-risk nicotine products. It also repeats the same arbitrary logic behind the FDA’s recent warning letter to NOAT—a Swedish company selling mild, recyclable nicotine pouches already cleared for sale in Europe. In both cases, symbolic toughness trumps scientific and economic sense.

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Asian nation introduces lifetime smoking ban for Gen Z and beyond

The Republic of Maldives has banned smoking for individuals born on or after January 1, 2007, becoming the second country in the world after New Zealand to implement a generational prohibition on tobacco. 

According to Maldives Health Statistics, tobacco consumption and exposure to secondhand smoke are among the leading causes of illness and death nationwide. This prompted President Mohamed Muizzu to launch an anti-smoking campaign last year, banning vapes and e-cigarettes while doubling import duties and taxes on cigarettes.

The new ban, affecting Generation Z first, was ratified as an amendment to the Tobacco Control Act in May and came into force on Saturday. It also reportedly applies to visitors to the island nation known for its luxury tourism.

Anyone born after January 1, 2007 is now prohibited from purchasing, selling, or using tobacco products in the Maldives. The restriction covers all forms of tobacco, and retailers must verify buyers’ ages. 

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With Cigarette Taxes Sky High, More New Yorkers Than Ever Turn to the Black Market

In 2023, New York raised its cigarette excise tax by $1.00 to $5.35 per pack. New York City imposes its own tax of $1.50 per pack, and that’s before you include federal and sales taxes, making for the most expensive smokes in the country. That is, cigarettes are expensive in New York for those who pay those taxes. But state officials were warned that such a high rate would drive consumers to the black market, and that’s exactly what happened. According to recent research, more New Yorkers than ever are turning to tax-evading illicit sources for their nicotine needs.

Taxes Into Good Health—or Not

When the New York excise tax was hiked, the Albany Times-Union noted, “it’s the nation’s highest and brings a pack of cigarettes at many retailers to about $12….Health advocates hailed the increase, saying it will lead to fewer smokers and cancer deaths. Anti-tax groups, though, predicted it will increase trafficking in illicit untaxed cigarettes in the state.”

Health advocates like taxing vices on the theory that raising taxes simultaneously generates government revenue while escalating prices for allegedly bad things—like cigarettes—out of reach of many consumers. What they rarely consider is that there are other options, such as buying cigarettes smuggled from jurisdictions with lower levies.

“New York has created a cigarette-smuggling empire, and the worst is yet to come,” Todd Nesbit, an economics professor at Ball State University, and Michael LaFaive, of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, warned even before the 2023 tax increase. “It’s the unavoidable consequence of the state’s decadeslong history of raising the cigarette tax.”

“If enacted, consumers will go across borders to do their shopping or rely on black-market suppliers,” agreed the Tax Foundation’s Adam Hoffer. “Tax revenues will fall, illicit activities will thrive, and law enforcement spending will need to increase.”

In fact, as Nesbit, LaFaive, and Hoffer emphasized, even before the dollar-per-pack tax hike, more than half of cigarettes sold in the state of New York lacked local tax stamps and were smuggled from elsewhere. Since 2023, illicit dealers appear to have claimed even more market share.

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Legalizing Medical Marijuana Is Linked To Reduced Use Of Tobacco And Amphetamines, New International Study Shows

There’s a “strong negative association” between tobacco use and legal medical marijuana sales, according to a new international study—indicating a “strong potential substitution effect” where people choose to use cannabis where it is allowed instead of smoking cigarettes.

The study, based on data from 20 countries, also found that amphetamine use is “negatively associated” with medical cannabis sales, “suggesting substitution dynamics.”

The researchers additionally concluded that a “well-regulated [medical cannabis, or MC] market can generate sustained economic benefits, emphasizing the need for comprehensive legal frameworks that address licensing, production standards, and access pathways,” adding that “removing barriers to access and enhancing consumer education will support the development of a responsible and sustainable market.”

The analysis also showed “a sustained growth trajectory” in medical cannabis sales after legalization, finding that the policy change is “associated with an average annual increase of 26.06 tons of MC sales in legalizing countries.” After excluding the U.S., which the researchers called “a major outlier in market size,” there was “a slightly lower average effect of 20.05,” which “still supports the persistent market expansion.”

The authors, based in Germany and Lebanon, cautioned that “given the ecological nature of the design, these results should be interpreted as population-level associations rather than individual-level causal effect.”

“Nonetheless, they highlight the potential economic relevance of cannabis legalization in expanding regulated markets and reshaping consumer behavior,” the paper says. “The study contributes to debates on legalization, public health, and economic policy by providing empirical evidence on the associations between legal reforms and market dynamics.”

The study comes amid new research indicating that marijuana use is linked to lower alcohol intake and diminished cravings in heavy drinkers, according to a new federally funded scientific paper.

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Another Government Lie? The Overwhelming Evidence that Tobacco does NOT Cause Cancer

One medical “fact” that the majority of people living in western countries today accept as “true”, is that smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer, and that tobacco is a toxic substance.

But is it true? Can we trust our government when it comes to health advice? Have they ever lied to us in the past about health or diseases?

First, think about it logically. People have smoked tobacco for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

U.S. Government “experts” figured out only in 1964 that cigarettes caused cancer and were bad for health, as the Surgeon General put out a warning declaring that cigarettes were bad for one’s health.

Was there actually any evidence or credible science to back this up, or were other interests in play behind this warning?

Fortunately, if one decides to search out the evidence themselves, there is plenty of evidence and research to show the opposite, that tobacco does not cause cancer, and that as a natural plant, it actually has some therapeutic properties, which at one time seemed to be well-known.

I want to state up front that I do not smoke cigarettes, and never have (I never enjoyed them, even when I was in high school and most of my friends smoked them), and that I have no economic ties at all to the tobacco industry.

Neither am I recommending that anyone should either start smoking tobacco, or quit smoking tobacco.

That is an individual choice, and my sole interest is in publishing the truth, and giving further reasons why it is unwise to trust our current medical system and the government alphabet agencies that protect them, rather than protecting the health of the American public.

If there are indeed therapeutic properties to tobacco, such as relieving neurological disorders like Parkinson’s Disease, Big Pharma would have plenty of motivation to suppress that information in favor of their pharmaceutical patented drugs.

Also, cancer has always been the largest money-maker in the pharmaceutical industry, and there is plenty of evidence that cancer is a modern disease caused by pharmaceutical products, especially most recently as a known side-effect of the experimental COVID shots, so they need alternative products to blame for the ever-increasing cancer rates that bring in $billions to Big Pharma, while continuing to propagate the lie that there are no cures for cancer, when in fact there are many, but all of them are banned by the FDA.

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Expanding the Drug War To Include Tobacco Would Be a Big Mistake

Last month, New Zealand scrapped a law that would have gradually prohibited tobacco products by banning sales to anyone born after 2008. But Brookline, a wealthy Boston suburb, will implement a similar scheme now that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (SJC) has cleared the way.

Brookline’s bylaw, which bans sales of “tobacco or e-cigarette products” to anyone born after 1999, is unlikely to have much practical impact, since the town is surrounded by municipalities where such sales remain legal. But it reflects a broader transition from regulation to prohibition among progressives who seem to have forgotten the lessons of the war on drugs.

The local merchants who challenged Brookline’s ban argued that it was preempted by a state law that sets 21 as the minimum purchase age for tobacco products. They also claimed the bylaw violates the Massachusetts Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection by arbitrarily discriminating against adults based on their birthdates.

The SJC rejected both arguments in a decision published on Friday. The court concluded that state legislators had left local officials free to impose additional sales restrictions. And since birthdate-based distinctions do not involve “a suspect classification,” it said, Brookline’s bylaw is constitutional because it is “rationally related to the town’s legitimate interest in mitigating tobacco use overall and in particular by minors.”

The striking aspect of Brookline’s law, of course, is that it applies to adults as well as minors. It currently covers residents in their 20s and eventually will apply to middle-aged and elderly consumers as well.

Since anyone 21 or older who wants to buy tobacco or vaping products can still legally do so across the border in Boston, Cambridge, or Newton, Brookline’s ban looks more like an exercise in virtue signaling than a serious attempt to reduce consumption. The same could be said of the outright bans on tobacco sales that two other wealthy and supposedly enlightened enclaves, Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, enacted in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

The Beverly Hills ban makes exceptions for hotels and cigar lounges, and both cities border jurisdictions where tobacco sales are still allowed. But even as moral statements, these edicts are flagrantly illiberal, standing for the proposition that adults cannot be trusted to decide for themselves which psychoactive substances they want to consume.

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THE SCIENCE IS CLEAR: MARIJUANA IS SAFER THAN TOBACCO

Nearly twice as many Americans believe that smoking cigarettes is more hazardous to your health than smoking marijuana. They’re right.

Numerous studies assessing the long-term health impacts of cannabis smoke exposure belie the myth that marijuana is associated with the same sort of well established, adverse respiratory hazards as tobacco.

For example, federally funded research at the University of California, Los Angeles compared the lifetime risk of lung cancer among more than 2,000 long-term marijuana smokers, tobacco smokers, and non-smokers.

Investigators determined that those who regularly smoked cigarettes possessed a 20-fold higher lung cancer risk than non-smokers. Those who only smoked marijuana had no elevated risk.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer,” the study’s lead author explained. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

More recently, a team of health experts writing in the journal Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases reported that neither former nor current cannabis smoking “of any cumulative lifetime amount” was associated with COPD progression or development.

Other studies indicate that cannabis smoke and tobacco smoke aren’t equally carcinogenic and that subjects who exclusively smoke cannabis have less exposure to harmful toxicants and carcinogens than tobacco smokers. Some researchers have also theorized that cannabinoids’ anti-cancer activities may offset some of the harms otherwise associated with inhaling smoke.

According to the findings of recent paper published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, “It is increasingly clear that cannabis has different effects on lung function [compared] to tobacco and the effects of widespread cannabis use will not necessarily mirror the harms caused by tobacco smoking.”

A separate review paper, published recently by researchers affiliated with the University of Arkansas, is even more blunt. “The data on marijuana contrast starkly with the consistent demonstration of injury from tobacco, the greatest legalized killer in the world today,” they concluded. “Any possible toxicity of marijuana pales in comparison.”

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Let’s Dispel The Myth That Cannabis And Tobacco Smoke Are Equally Hazardous To Health

A growing percentage of Americans perceive smoking cannabis to be less dangerous than smoking tobacco cigarettes. They’re correct, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the recent slew of media headlines.

“Many Americans wrongly believe exposure to marijuana smoke is safer than tobacco,” screamed CNN. Coverage of the survey data in Everyday Health warned, “People Underestimate the Health Risks of Smoking Marijuana.” Syndicated coverage of the study by US News and World Report similarly lamented, “More Americans Than Ever Believe Marijuana Smoke is Safer Than Cigarette Smoke. They’re Wrong.”

In fact, it’s the news media that’s in error.

Numerous studies assessing the long-term health impacts of cannabis smoke exposure belie the myth that marijuana is associated with the same sort of well established, adverse respiratory hazards as tobacco.

For example, federally funded research performed by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles compared the lifetime risk of lung cancer among more than 2,000 long-term marijuana smokers, tobacco smokers, and non-smokers. Investigators determined that those who regularly smoked cigarettes possessed a 20-fold higher lung cancer risk than did non-smokers. By contrast, those who only smoked marijuana possessed no such elevated risk.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” the study’s lead author explained. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

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WHO’s Absurd Claim That Tobacco Farming Is Causing Children To Starve

With the COVID-19 pandemic fading away, the World Health Organization (WHO) is returning to its core mission: making bogus, paternalistic attacks on tobacco users and producers.

To promote its World No Tobacco Day this year, WHO has been running a “grow food, not tobacco” campaign that mendaciously pins food insecurity on the global tobacco trade. “Tobacco is grown in over 124 countries, taking up 3.2 million hectares of fertile land that could be used to grow food,” reads a recent WHO report, which it says “compounds the food security issues” faced by low- and middle-income countries.

In addition to starving their countrymen, tobacco farmers are also keeping themselves trapped in poverty by growing a crop that offers little economic return, says the WHO report. Tobacco companies’ subsidization of seeds, fertilizers, financing, and more keeps farmers growing this toxic substance. A lack of government subsidies for alternative grows leaves them stuck in this grim business.

To drive home the point about tobacco’s ruinous impact, the WHO report and associated campaign material feature pictures of dead-eyed, malnourished children holding up food bowls filled with smoldering cigarette butts.

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