Nigeria: Tobacco Smuggling, Terrorism and the Economy

Source from:  Vanguard  05/13/2014

Tobacco companies and health lobbyists never see eye-to-eye but on one issue they make strange bedfellows: the issue of smuggling.

Both parties, indeed all parties including anti-tobacco advocates and journalists, agree that the smuggling of cigarettes needs to be stamped out in order to protect public health, government revenues and commercial investments. These days there is an even more urgent incentive to stem smuggling -terrorism.

Before addressing the link between terrorism and illicit trade in tobacco, there are few fixed facts that should be remembered. First, smuggling is not a thing of today. The practice has existed for centuries and as long as there are porous borders and corruption, it is likely to continue.

Alcohol and tobacco, arguably the most lucrative legal products for smugglers, have been sneaked in and out of countries around the world for well over five hundred years.

Secondly, smugglers are not charitable; they do it for profit so as long as an item remains profitable, they will continue to supply it clandestinely. Conversely, once an item becomes unprofitable to smuggle, they will move on to other, more profitable things.

One of the most fundamental principles of economics revolves around supply, demand and price. In very basic terms, the higher the demand, the higher the price. Once the legal supply of a product is cut off, demand for contraband versions of the product will rise.

This will lead to a profitable jamboree for smugglers, who will control the supply and thus manipulate the price and their profit margins. It seems quite obvious that legislating legal producers out of existence will leave the supply of cigarettes in the hands of smugglers, which will lead to current levels of smuggling escalating out of control.

The first and second points - that smuggling is a long established and profitable activity - has led to it becoming a means that international organised terror groups, crime rings and rebel guerrillas have turned to, to finance their activities. They do this either directly, by trafficking the goods, or indirectly, by offering paid protection for other groups carrying out the smuggling.

Even the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which regularly makes clear its anti-tobacco stance, published a 2009 article titled Terrorism and Tobacco, in which well-known radical groups such as the 'Real' IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as lesser known rebel and guerrilla groups were reported to have either direct or indirect links to cigarette smuggling.

In the report an investigator was quoted as saying that "This is one of those few problems that is fixable", saying that contraband can be dealt with because the (legitimate) producers and distributors can control the process. The investigator went on to state, "You need to ensure that the products are being sold through legitimate channels, through legitimate distributors."

The ways in which terror groups fund their activities are well known to politicians around the world. In 2007 a Republican member of the US House Committee on Homeland Security released a paper titled Tobacco and Terror: How Cigarette Smuggling is Funding our Enemies Abroad, in which he highlighted the link between smugglers and international terror. In some instances non-terror organisations said to be in support of terror groups are said to channel part of their smuggling profits to fund the terror group's expenses and attacks.

Whether these benefactors are sponsoring terror for political or ideological reasons remains unclear.

When tobacco companies clamour about smuggling, they are seen as being protective of their sales revenue, which is understandable - so would any other legal enterprise that has invested heavily in scientific research and development. But it is not just about sales and commercial concerns.

Smuggling is no longer only a matter of government tax revenues or long term public health concerns; with the increasing spate of terror attacks around the world, stemming the illicit trade in tobacco has become a matter of public safety. From Europe to Asia, Africa to the Middle East, no one is safe from terror attacks and we cannot continue to pretend that it is of no concern to us.

It is a shared problem for all sides and as reported in the article by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, it is a problem that the legitimate producers and distributors can help to solve. Who ever thought that opponents in the tobacco control drama - companies, governments, anti-tobacco lobbyists and health campaigners - could one day be joined in a fight against a common cause? When it comes to cigarette smuggling, it may well become a case of Sleeping with the Enemy. Enditem