Australia's Tobacco Taxes Have Fueled A Massive Black Market For Cigarettes

Australia's Tobacco Taxes Have Fueled A Massive Black Market For Cigarettes One lesson governments never seem to learn is that when taxes push the legal price of something high enough, a black market will eventually show up to collect the difference. Australia is now getting a particularly ugly demonstration of that principle. After more than a decade of relentlessly increasing tobacco taxes in an effort to crush smoking, the country has created an enormous price gap between legal and illegal cigarettes, and organized crime has rushed in to fill it, according to the Financial Times. A legal pack of cigarettes now costs close to A$60, or roughly US$42, making Australian cigarettes the most expensive in the world. Excise taxes...

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