OPP stumble on illegal tobacco

RIDE check stops van full of contraband

December 14, 2009 Hamilton Spectator

John Burman

CALEDONIA – OPP officers on a a RIDE check did a double-take when they peered inside a red mini-van stopped on Brant County Road 22 Friday night.

The van was crammed full of unmarked and untaxed cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco.

The officers seized the load and arrested a 38-year-old Etobicoke man.

When the counting was done, the van had been loaded with 513 cartons of cigarettes, 243 packages of tobacco and 271 cartons of cigars.

Constable Larry Plummer, Brant County OPP media relations officer, said today police are “not sure where he was coming from” when the van was stopped at 6:20 p.m. Also, he said, he had no estimate of the value of the load. A marked and taxed carton of 200 cigarettes sells legitimately in Hamilton for $73.

The RIDE check was located on Brant County Road 22 which runs north from Highway 54 and the Grand River, halfway between the Caledonia bypass and the Chiefswood Road bridge into Six Nations territory.

In the past decade a thriving business has developed on reserves selling untaxed smokes.

Under Ontario's Tobacco Tax Act, it's illegal for non-natives to "buy, possess, or distribute any quantity of unmarked tobacco."

Natives are exempt from that law.

The man in the van has been charged  under the Tobacco Tax Act with possession of unmarked cigarettes, possession of tobacco in bulk purchase from a person who does not hold a permit, and two counts of possession of untaxed tobacco.

He is to appear in Brantford court March 30.