What a waste of money!

An item in the "Journal" caught my eye a few days ago. It appears the Retailers Against Smuggling were to brief the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform tomorrow, on the reality of tobacco smuggling.

The end user, the smoker, is not invited of course. Were I allowed to make a representation on your behalf, I might explain that the causes of the success of the smugglers are economic. "Just say for example, you were told that if you retired tomorrow, your pension would be worth €20,000 a year more than if you waited until retirement age", I would ask them, "What would you do?" I think they would understand that analogy. Then I would continue, "Just say you are about to go into a shop to buy a commodity costing €9.15 and a fella outside shows you the exact same thing and says you can have it for €3.20. What would you do?"

"Why would the smoker go into the shop and waste two thirds of his money?" I would ask them. Even an idiot would understand the high price in the shop is at the root of the problem. Well, not an idiot who works for one of our favorite charities of course, but everybody else can see the ‘causal link’, if you'll excuse the expression.

But, speaking of waste, the Journal article informs us that "Last year, officials seized 109.1 million illegal cigarettes with a retail value of €45.9 million, and 11.157kg of tobacco worth €4 million". So what did our public representatives decide to do with €50 million of a legal commodity then? Well, "Michael Noonan said he had been informed that ‘all cigarettes and tobacco seized by Revenue are securely destroyed under Revenue control.’”

Can you believe that in these straightened times? The retailers group has 3,000 members, and their gripe in the main is that they are losing money. If the swag was divided evenly and split between them all, they would each get €16,500 worth of legal resaleable products. Or, the lot could be returned to the tobacco companies, their rightful owners. Or, a quit line could be set-up that actually works. A copy of Allen Carr's book could be given free to those trying to quit, accompanied by 200 free cigarettes for the reader while they wade through the book. Now that would be an inducement.

But no. Official wisdom dictates that €50m worth of a legally re-saleable product must be destroyed, with no care given to the cost of nabbing them in the first place, or the value of the goods themselves. And these are the very people who might pompously declare that "Smokers are in denial".