Virginia’s Black-Market Cigarette Problem

 

(CSP) RICHMOND, Va. -- According to a British Medical Journal study last year, nearly 50% of black market cigarettes missing New York tax stamps came from Virginia. The reason is hardly a mystery: New York boasts the highest cigarette excise tax in the country ($4.35 per pack) versus Virginia’s 30-cents-per-pack rate (the second lowest in the nation). Separated by just a few hours via car, smuggling cigarettes from Virginia and into New York and other higher-tax states has become quite a lucrative business.
“It’s like a train track,” Paul Carey, head of enforcement for the Northern Virginia Cigarette Tax Board, told the Richmond-Times Dispatch. “You can pluck off trains all day long, but that track is still there.” Continued