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Something strange is happening in the home of the free market.
Federal Law allows American citizens to purchase cigarettes by mail from foreign countries
For some years, the Yesmoke shop has been shipping from Switzerland cigarettes of the finest quality almost all over the world: Marlboro, Camel, Winston, Benson & Edges, etc., of course, always with customs declarations.
And people have spoken well about Yesmoke, which started business on the 1st of January 2000, right from its beginnings.
Starting from the journey to London's BBC, where Yesmoke “explained” to all English language speaking countries that the products received by mail were to be taxed in the country of destination and not in the country they were shipped from…
In Canada, for example, duty taxes were applied on the delivery of the packages and, pleasant surprise, the cigarettes still cost a bit less than at the local stores.Those who said that the world of tobacco and its distribution is in the hands of the five colossi, who have eliminated all forms of competition, had to change their tune. Here, for example, was a new free sales channel. Good for you, Canada!
Why, on the other hand, in the country that gave birth to that instrument of freedom called Internet, are citizens not allowed to import cartons of cigarettes even though the low permits it? In the US, in fact, customs declarations, also called import requests, have always been left unanswered, much to the joy of customers who were able to buy products from their own homes as if they were at an airport duty-free shop. And the customs authorities could not have been unaware of this.
But after almost five years (Yesmoke began shipping in January 2000), something started to move. On the 16th of November, the DHL plane that carries mail to New York for Swisspost, with the first cartons of Yesmokes on board, was inspected at JFK and all the cigarettes were seized including the Yesmokes, regulars and lights. From one extreme to the other, we could say.
Evidently, there is a problem here: not to clear cigarettes through customs, but to clear the on-line sold cigarettes, regardless of the rights of American citizens guaranteed by federal law.
In the 18th century the India Company, built up on a flourishing contraband business, became the principal supplier of opium to the immense population of China. In a short time the state monopoly of the drug passed under the control of the famous East India Company and opium became a key product in its trade, an enormous business. But those were other times; at the time, in China there was decapitation for smokers of tobacco, according to a law of 1638.
Today the cartel of tobacco giants is just as active providing cigarettes to the entire world population. The business is much bigger - and there are a lot of black holes in it.
What would probably change if mail-order commerce were free and regulated?
Although the law specifies that cigarettes are a food product, no information is given to consumers
- The sale by mail order, especially in the case of cigarettes, would override a complex and elaborate system of distribution consolidated in decades of silences and compromises. And even with the shipping costs, the products would turn out to be cheaper than those bought at the local store, with all customs duties fully paid.
- An autonomous distribution channel, not subject to any vetoes or habits, would enable Consumer Protection to be set up. Today information to consumers does not appear on cigarette packs, thanks to the immense power of the cartel of manufacturers, who evidently have influence over the governing bodies of all countries. So a troublesome product is immediately boycotted and blocked, and forced into the traditional distribution system.
Although the law specifies that cigarettes are a food product, no information is given to consumers regarding their:
- ingredients,
- additives (including pesticides and fertilizers used in the cultivation),
- date of production,
- place of production.
Today Big Tobacco can produce and distribute around the whole world cigarettes that have significant “secret” differences in their additives, and the makers do not have to inform anyone on this. “To better satisfy the smokers' tastes, that differ from one country to another”, they say. But these chemical agents are present in cigarettes in varied quantities. This is what basically characterizes cigarettes with different quality standards, though there are no differences in their prices. This is not acceptable!
Governments today have not yet taken constructive steps to establish precise rules in the interest of their citizens, and in some respects we can see analogies with a past when democracy had a hard time affirming itself.
The problem regards all on-line commerce. Mail-order sales, in fact, exalted and internationalized by the advent of electronic commerce, is ready to give a strong contribution to the improvement of the quality of life, with the elimination of international boundaries (but not customs duties, of course), allowing people to buy by mail not only in their own country but also around the world. With a credit card, for example, we can already purchase goods in any country without worrying about different currencies. Based on these prospects of progress, companies that handle electronic commerce have reached stratospheric quotations on stock markets, see, for example the six billion dollars that is the market worth of Amazon.
There are countries that have enacted paradoxical punitive measures - luckily without exile and torture. In New York, a recent “made to measure” law for on-line commerce prohibited the shipment of cigarettes by mail. DHL bowed to this, but the USPS did not, and it continues to deliver cigarettes.
In fact, not only is it contrary to United States law to forbid the shipment of cigarettes by mail, but it would also be against the law to not offer the service which the Post Office cannot refuse.
Big Tobacco, with the complicity of Big Government, has many privileges. Could these not be at the base of the difficulties of clearing on-line sold cigarettes through customs?
What's going to happen?
Considering the interminable inspections being held at New York's JFK airport, Yesmoke cannot continue shipping by post cigarettes to customers in the USA. Yesmokes will be imported into the home of the free market to be sold in local stores in the future. It has been said that Big Tobacco has the power to make governments fall; wèll see what it does with Yesmoke. We will document and analyze in detail the process of annihilation of small competitors by Big Tobacco.
There are a lot of issues to clear up before we can reach an international postal market that operates in the interests of the citizens. We certainly don't want to solve the problem the way the Russian Czar did when he set up the death penalty for smokers.
But then we would be forced to go back on our steps when people say “I'm just dying for a smoke!”.
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