Contraband Tobacco

Revelations about British American Tobaccco and smuggling

On Jan. 31st, 2000, the prestigious English daily The Guardian, in co-operation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, published a major exposé on British American Tobacco (BAT) and cigarette smuggling in numerous countries. This exposé, the fruits of many months of work by a team of investigative journalists, is available on the Internet, along...

Imperial Tobacco, Imasco, and the Smuggling of Cigarettes into Canada

Introduction On Dec. 21st, 1999, the Canadian federal government announced that it had filed a civil suit, under the United States Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, against Canada’s No. 3 cigarette company, RJR-Macdonald (now JTI-Macdonald), the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers’ Council (CTMC), the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and various related companies. This suit stems from allegations...

EU launches lawsuit against Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds

The European Union has filed a civil suit against two large U.S.-based tobacco companies, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, alleging the tobacco industry was involved in smuggling cigarettes into the EU. Like the Canadian suit against R.J. Reynolds (and others), filed in December 1999, the EU suit is being made under the Racketeering Influenced and...

Surveying the Damage

On Oct. 25th, a coalition of health groups released a report on the effects of the 1994 tobacco tax rollback, which saw cigarette prices cut in half in much of the country. The four groups (Canadian Cancer Society, Non-Smokers’ Rights Association, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Québec Coalition for Tobacco Control) held...

Tobacco insider talks: major firms were deeply involved in cross-border smuggling, former executive says

Feb. 24, 1999, was not a banner day for Les Thompson. Arrested by U.S. Customs agents in the Ontario city of Windsor, cuffed and thrown into jail, the RJR-Macdonald sales executive suddenly became the slick, hard-driving, unscrupulous face of big tobacco. U.S. prosecutors claimed they had nabbed the man behind a billion-dollar tobacco-smuggling network that...