Paul Legall
The Hamilton Spectator
(Nov 3, 2007)
Researchers probing the multimillion-dollar underground cigarette market had expected to find a higher usage of illegal products in Hamilton high schools than elsewhere.
They had assumed local students would take advantage of the proximity to about 100 smoke shops on the Six Nations reserve that sell cheap tax-free cigarettes.
Of the 500 cigarette butts collected around five Hamilton high schools during a recent survey in Ontario and Quebec, 15 per cent were found to be contraband or from unknown sources.
The figure was significantly lower than other cities in the Greater Toronto area, such as Newmarket, Mississauga and Aurora, where almost half of the high school smokers were using illegal products.
The average illegal cigarette consumption among 55 schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) was 24 per cent. Among 50 schools in Greater Montreal Area (GMA), it was 35 per cent.
"I assumed it would have been higher in Hamilton (because of the proximity to the reserve less than half an hour away)," Dave Bryans, president of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association (CCSA), said in an telephone interview yesterday.
In the Montreal area, for example, schools near a Mohawk reservation were also around the 50 per cent mark and one school as high as 74 per cent.
RCMP Sergeant Michael Harvey, of the Central St. Lawrence Valley detachment, said more than 90 per cent of illegal cigarettes seized by the RCMP in 2006 originated from the American side of the Akwesasne-Mohawk territory. Known as "smugglers' alley," the territory straddles the international border near Cornwall and goes into Quebec.
After being smuggled across the border into Canada at Cornwall, Harvey said, the contraband goes to smoke shacks on native reserves in Quebec and Ontario where it's sold in clear plastic bags containing 200 cigarettes each.
Organized crime groups or small entrepreneurs looking for a fast buck can purchase the cigarettes from the shacks at $8 to $12 a bag and resell off the reserve smokes for about double the cost. A high school student buying a bag of cigarettes could expect to pay about $20 compared to about $75 a carton at the corner store.
But if he gets caught, Harvey said, he could be charged under the federal Excise Act and be liable for a fine, criminal record and even jail term.
Bryans said the survey didn't include towns like Caledonia and Hagersville which abut the Six Nations and New Credit reserves.
He cautioned that it would be dangerous to draw any hard conclusions from the survey, which was commissioned by the CCSA and conducted between Sept. 18 to Oct. 5. During that period, researchers collected 11,000 cigarette butts from areas outside the school grounds where smokers congregated.
They had the butts analyzed and categorized as legal, contraband or from an unknown source.
Bryans described the survey as a "snapshot" rather than an exhaustive study of teen smoking habits. But he wasn't surprised to learn Halton students used less illegal cigarettes than anybody else in the GTA. He believes it's because they have more money and are probably more willing to pay the full price.