Spotlight Shining On The Rez

This has been going on for years, and it is not only cigarettes, and except for the occassional bust by the RCMP no major dent has been made.......

Roaring tobacco racket lures kids, evades taxes

Cheap `knock-off' cigarettes easier than ever to buy; experts warn of unknown health risks

Dec. 16, 2006. 05:29 AM

DALE BRAZAO AND ROBERT CRIBB

STAFF REPORTERS

Standing in his usual spot outside a grungy Queen St. E. bar, Luigi digs into his bulging coat pocket and slides a pack of illegal cigarettes into the hands of a 16-year-old.The price is dirt cheap — $4 for 20 smokes — about half the cost of a legal pack. Hundreds of these transactions take place every day in Toronto's burgeoning tobacco black market — an illicit billion-dollar business that thrives by evading the taxes slapped on legal cigarettes. Ontario's enormous — and growing — underground cigarette trade robs tens of millions from government coffers. It also undermines the "sin tax" strategy governments have long relied upon to keep teens from developing the cancer-causing habit. The cigarettes are illegal because they are sold without government taxes; they don't display proper health warnings and are sometimes sold as singles.The international smuggling pipeline that floods Ontario with a mind-boggling number of illegal cigarettes each year ends at corner stores, gas stations, donut shops and sidewalk merchants like Luigi. Police and health officials have stepped up enforcement but say the problem is growing.The 50-something Luigi counts among his clientele men in suits, drug addicts and kids scoring a pack of cheap smokes in the middle of the day. Hour after hour, he pulls bright red packs of DK's cigarettes from his oversized blue jacket and completes the transactions. Luigi will also sell single cigarettes for 25 cents each and cartons for $28 — an array of consumer choices that has built him a bustling street-side business.A fixture on the Queen St. E. strip east of Sherbourne St., Luigi says he's been selling illegal smokes for three months. A supplier from a native reserve drops off his shipments every couple of weeks, he said.

Illegal smokes and Lakota........