Entirely Predictable

A New Industry

New Zealand has a grandiose scheme.  It was dreamed up by the former co-leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia.  It was supported by the health Nazi's and a legion of do-gooders.  The scheme is to make New Zealand "smoke free" by 2025.  

The key weapon to achieve this idealistic goal is tax.  The government is raising taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products regularly.  This, naturally enough, increases the price of the product in the shops.  Higher price.  Lower demand.  A "smoke free" future beckons.

But, once again, the central planners have overlooked the unintended consequences.  Cigarettes are now so expensive they serve as a hard currency substitute.  Robberies--increasingly forceful and violent--where the object is to grab as many cigarette packets as possible are on the rise.  Why?  Because there is a ready market for them.  They are easy to convert to cash.

The days of being able to swagger into a local dairy and rob the till are fast becoming long gone.  Eftpos and other forms of electronic purchasing has meant that the average contents of the till are reducing by the week.  Not much in there to rob.  But ciggies are becoming an alternative currency--and will become more and more so as the price continues to rise.

A growing demand for black market cigarettes is believed to be the driving force behind a streak of violent robberies in Auckland. And experts say the discovery may be the first sign of a wider problem developing.

Counties Manukau Police set up a special investigations unit earlier this year to solve 10 aggravated robberies at service stations in the region.  Two months later, 12 people have been arrested in relation to seven of the alleged robberies - with police noting a trend of black market cigarettes and tobacco as motivation for the crimes.

Counties Manukau Detective Sergeant Karen Bright said 11 men and one woman aged between 16 and 23 had been arrested and charged with a range of offences, including receiving stolen goods.  A key to cracking the cases was tips from people who had been offered the goods cheaply, she said.  "It appeared that cigarettes were being targeted and we know that the community is being offered them for sale.

There have been cigarettes for sale on [online] forums but mainly offered to people that [the offenders] know."  The special unit was established in January after the robberies began escalating in frequency and violence - with one attendant kicked and narrowly dodging a tyre iron being swung at him.  [NZ Herald]

The utopian "smoke-free" goal will never be achieved.  What we will get, however, is a thriving criminal industry.  Eventually, the criminal gangs will take an interest in tobacco--as they have overseas--and the consequences of Tariana Turia's nannying will become far worse than the problem she set out to remove.

Prohibition never, ever works.  But it does create lots of nefarious growth industries.  Just what we needed.