United States
In the United States each of the fifty states taxes cigarette packs at a different price. In 1992 states charged an average of 25 cents. By January 2002 that average increased to 45 cents. Six months later states, trying to compensate for budget deficits, raised their cigarette taxes to an average 54 cents. According to John D'Angelo of the U.S. government's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), there is a "direct relationship between the increase in a state's tax and an increase in illegal trafficking." This is true with all psychotropic substances, the more the state tries to repress the trade with a legal or illegal substance, the higher the prices and with them the profit margins become. The U.S. government foiled funding operations by Al Qaeda in New York in 1999 and Hezbollah in North Carolina in 2002.
It has been reported that smuggling one truckload of cigarettes within the United States can lead to a profit of US$2 million.
Read more about this topic: Cigarette Smuggling
Famous quotes related to united states:
“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The popular colleges of the United States are turning out more educated people with less originality and fewer geniuses than any other country.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)