HALIFAX, NS - The Atlantic Convenience Stores Association (ACSA) said last week that contraband cigarettes are helping to drive Nova Scotia convenience stores out of business and fuel organized crime, The Chronicle Herald reports.
The ACSA recently hired a company to retrieve cigarette butts from 43 locations across Atlantic Canada, including provincial government buildings, and after analysis determined that 17.3 percent were from illegal cigarettes.
"The government building findings, for us, were a little surprising and a little shocking because it??s government that we??re lobbying to help us fight this problem and, at the same time, they??re kind of adding to the problem when employees are smoking contraband product," said Mike Hammoud, president of the ACSA.
According to the ACSA, illegal cigarettes cost Canada $1.2 billion in lost tax revenue last year.
"We believe many people feel that this is a victimless crime, that they??re purchasing the product without hurting anyone other than the government," Hammoud said, adding that the money that people spend on illegal cigarettes helps fund organized crime.
Hammoud said that nearly one in three cigarettes purchased in Canada is illegal, a figure that he expects to grow to 50 percent without government intervention.
As convenience stores rely heavily on tobacco sales, illegal sales are particularly harmful to them, and 12.8 percent of the province's stores ?" 285 ?" went out of business last year.
"Our retailers simply cannot compete with contraband activities and the low prices of such illegal products," Hammoud said.
The Canadian Convenience Store Association has called for a 10 percent reduction in contraband tobacco by year's end, a goal that Hammoud said will require assistance from federal and provincial governments.
"Since smuggling is happening where they live, in their own backyards, in their own community, it is their responsibility. It??s their corner-store retailers that are suffering. It??s the teenagers of their ridings who are being provided cheap, illegal cigarettes by criminals," Hammoud said.