Contraband Tobacco

Canadian health groups file complaint about RCMP failure to prosecute industry executives

February 7, 2001 Ms. Shirley Heafey Chair Commission for Public Complaints against the R.C.M.P. 60 Queen Street, 3rd floor Ottawa, ON K1P 5Y7 Dear Ms. Heafey: Please accept this letter as a complaint to the RCMP Public Complaints Commission regarding the conduct by the RCMP of its investigations into the smuggling of cigarettes into Canada in the early 1990s. Our complaint stems...

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...