So, Melodie Tilson, policy director of something called the Non- Smokers' Rights Association, doesn't believe there is a link between high taxes and the booming contraband tobacco business.
For that, Ms. Tilson gets my vote for the 2010 Ostrich (Head in the Sand) Award.
In a letter chastising Kevin Gaudet, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Association, Ms. Tilson rails at his suggestion that high taxes are fueling the illegal tobacco trade.
Instead, she blames the Big Three tobacco companies (for the 1990s smuggling crisis) and government reluctance to "address the elephant in the room" for today's much bigger smuggling problem.
The "elephant", according to Ms. Tilson, are native reserves. She says they are at the centre of the illegal manufacturing, distribution, and sales operations of illegal smokes.
Is Ms. Tilson suggesting that Canadian law enforcement agencies should storm the reserves and shut down the factories?
She condemns Gaudet, who wrote a column for Sun Media on the subject, and others for spreading "misinformation."
Let's take a look at this so-called information.
True, in the late 1980s and early 1990s big tobacco had its slimy mitts in the smuggling business while the government turned a blind eye.
Tax-free cigarettes were manufactured in Canada for export, sent to warehouses in upper New York State, then smuggled back into Canada.
The government never bothered to wonder why Canadian cigarettes had become in such demand across the U.S.
Most of the exported smokes were rerouted through Akwesasne to the Canadian black market.
Then a funny thing happened. The federal and provincial governments slashed tobacco taxes.
The next day the smugglers were out of business.
Smugglers who bought high-end vehicles with bagfulls of cash were having trouble paying for an oil change.
Legal cigarettes sales increased.
Then the province and feds, foolishly thinking they had won the war, started raising taxes to discourage people from smoking.
No Virginia, it had nothing to do with the cash-strapped province and feds milking a cash cow.
Soon, the smugglers were back in business ... bigger than ever, and with a new wrinkle.
Native reserves started making their own tax-free cigarettes.
First there were a couple of factories set up on the U.S. side of Akwesasne.
Then it grew to about dozen. That's how big the demand
became.
And, because the factories
were on the U.S. side of the sprawling international territory, they weren't breaking any laws.
The cigarettes didn't become illegal until they came into Canada.
Today, a couple of the factories have reinvented themselves as legal by paying state taxes, but several others continue to churn out millions of cartons of smokes each year.
And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where they are shipped.
Despite all the police resources poured into the problem, it is estimated less than 15% of the smokes are seized.
Law enforcement is up against a geographical nightmare, not to mention the sensitive issue of native
sovereignty, something Ms. Tilson fails to understand.
She should visit this region to see what police are up against.
New York State police refuse to enter Akwesasne to shut down the factories that are out of the reach of Canadian police.
Today, organized crime is heavily involved in the distribution of illegal cigarettes ... and the spinoffs (drugs, people smuggling, gun running).
And with that comes violence.
The province and feds are not interested in revisiting a tax cut on cigarettes ... one that would end smuggling.
The governments and those on the front lines of the war against tobacco use are sticking to the script that high taxes discourage people from smoking.
Then why not go whole hog and slap a $100 tax on every carton of cigarettes?
If there is no relationship between smuggled smokes and high taxes, why not?
Better yet, why is a product that is beyond question a health hazard, a product that is described by government health ministries as a killer, being sold to the public?
The answer is pretty simple. Governments are addicted to
tobacco taxes, just as they are to all other so-called "sin" taxes.
So, like all the other vices they profit from, governments talk out of both sides of their mouths.