10 million illegal..... cigarettes?

This country is a funny one with the things that they outlaw and the industries they try to protect. As it seems most of the world is attempting to curb smoking addiction and the obvious health risks that come along with it, Thailand merely pretends to be interested in this while at the same time actively protecting the tobacco monopoly that exists here. Unless they changed the name of it the tobacco monopoly that I am referring to was actually officially called The Tobacco Monopoly.

Not long ago vapes were outlawed and while I can understand why they wouldn't want youths to get their hands on this since there is certainly a connection between youth smoking and the appeal of vaping, the real reason why Thailand was banning this was because people were transitioning from smoking cigarettes to vaping and this was costing the owners money and well, we can't have that, can we?

Cigarettes are remarkably inexpensive here in Thailand, with low level brands going for less than $1 a pack in minimarts and even less if you buy in bulk. I do not smoke and am annoyed by it in public but you don't have to be here for very long to realize that this country has a very lax approach towards smoking and you can do it just about anywhere you want to, unfortunately.

Recently there was a bust on a knockoff good that I was unaware existed in that a very large amount of counterfeit cigarettes were caught by Customs.

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I think it is kind of funny that any time something legal importance happens that a bunch of people that were involved have to all line up to get their photo taken with it. It is almost like a CV of whodunnit.

10 million counterfeit cigarettes were found and this has an estimated value of a lot of money. Just imagine $1 a pack and well I think you can imagine that the people behind this are probably upset about this particular bust.

Rather that just repeat what was in the English-language news for Thailand I want to instead give my opinion on what is really going on here. I don't think that a bust of this magnitude is an accident and this, like a lot of smuggling operations that take place regularly in Thailand, was probably known about for a long time but whoever the officials were that were getting kickbacks probably didn't get their envelope stuffed with cash on time and therefore the decision was made to punish the smugglers. Just think about it ok? What are the chances that something this huge was a one-off? What are we meant to believe that there is an organization out there that just randomly sends multi-million dollar shipments to Phuket on the off chance that nobody is going to check? I could understand if these were small parcels of something like illegal drugs and the perpetrators are willing to accept a certain amount of the shipments being intercepted, but this was all in one batch. For someone to have the gall to send something of that magnitude, it was almost certainly because they were told by someone in power that it was ok to do so.

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There are probably a couple of other reasons that this was intercepted instead of being let through and this is likely involving the corrupt government's protection of the local tobacco industry here in Thailand that is once again, the Tobacco Monopoly. Since smoking is going down on an international level, this industry has been seeing a constant downturn in revenue for their industry and therefore something like 10 million fake Marlboros getting smuggled into the country now affects their bottom line. How are they going to finish paying for their renovations on their super-yachts if these selfish smugglers keep making competition for the industry that they cornered decades ago?

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The other reason is tax revenue and it is estimated that this amount of ciggies would have been around 71 million baht (about 2 million dollars) worth of tax revenue. If there is one thing all government really really likes, it is tax revenue. So this cannot be allowed!

The thing that gets me is that the articles I have read about this in no way indicate that there is some sort of internal affairs investigation going on but come on now! We all know that there was a team of people on the inside that were personally benefiting from this sort of operation going on. I would start by looking at the Phuket Customs bosses and seeing what sort of cars they drive, what sort of houses they live in etc. and then compare that to what their official salaries are. Chances are, there are a couple of big bosses down there that have assets worth many times what their overall salary is.

This is just so common with Thai government positions. All the way from the street cop up to the top chief of police locally and whatever the main police head is at a national level. All of these people at one point or another are found to have lavish lifestyles despite the fact that they receive quite modest salaries. Is this a coincidence? I don't think so.

I suppose if I was to say one good thing it would be that Thailand, despite its really corrupt police force and judicial system, is still a pretty darn safe place to live. So I guess they are doing something right. But in the meantime lets stop pretending that this ciggy bust was an isolated incident. This is just the one to send a message to whoever the mafia folks are out there that run these operations in the first place.