Editor's Blog Jan 27th 2012
Tobacco Trafficking Arrests: Token Gestures?
Its great to see how customs and police are tackling the tobacco smuggling problem, this week alone has seen several arrests and the seizure of hundreds of thousands of cigarettes, in what appears to be a tougher stance, on the trafficking of cigarettes across the border.
In recent years we have seen an increase of persons coming over the frontier with the sole idea of taking a couple of cartons back to supplement their income. But more disturbing than that, are the organised groups of people being run by some really shady characters both locally and by our friends to the North.
With Gibraltar tobacco being confiscated as far afield as Almeria, we can already see that it is big business and not some poor out of work Spaniard, trying to make a living.
Stopping the smuggling of cigarettes is quite a simple exercise; all you have to do is raise the price of a box to where it supersedes the price of a box of the equivalent across the border.
Government earns a pretty penny from revenues collected from the sales of tobacco, just how willing are they to stop the trafficking all together?
Are these arrests just token measures to placate the general public, while business continues as normal?
