Federal policymakers wrestle with public health problems that are deeply difficult, tragic, and absolutely inexcusable. The first responders on the front lines of these problems are often police officers, however, not health care specialists or social workers.
Police officers serve in dual-hatted public safety and public health roles. When a police officer takes a drug dealer off the streets, she’s protecting the public’s health as well as enforcing the law. The same is true when a police officer arrests an illicit cigarette vendor.
Sales of loosies and other illicit (not properly taxed) cigarettes aren’t victimless crimes; they are attacks on federal, state, and local tobacco control policies. When illicit tobacco is sold to underage smokers, the sellers are committing crimes against children.
A recent National Academy of Sciences study recognized that most illicit tobacco studies have focused on adults which makes it “difficult to draw strong conclusions about the purchase and use of illicit tobacco by youth.” Even though there is limited data, the NAS study still concludes that youth access to illicit tobacco in the U.S. represents “a major concern for public health.”
In Canada, researchers found that a “large majority of adolescent smokers participate in the contraband tobacco market, and ‘First Nations/Native’ tobacco constitutes a substantial share of consumption among adolescent daily smokers.”
American, European, Taiwanese and Australian studies warn that counterfeit and other illicitly made cigarettes are even more hazardous than legal tobacco products. For example, a new study supported by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) states that “[m]arkedly higher Pb and Cd concentrations commonly found in counterfeit cigarettes make using them a source of greater exposure to heavy metals than genuine brands.” The study also explains that “[c]hildren are especially vulnerable to heavy metals in tobacco smoke.”
Illicit cigarette vendors are a threat to adolescent health because they sell cigarettes without age restrictions, because they advertise the availability of tobacco, because they sell cigarettes that are under priced, and because they sell cigarettes that may have substantially higher levels of cadmium, lead and other harmful and potentially harmful constituents.
Despite the health risks to adolescents from illicit tobacco, law enforcement actions against the illicit cigarette trade are highly controversial. Illicit tobacco vendors are not entrepreneurs; they are cannon fodder for interstate and transnational organized crime groups which steal billions of dollars in tax revenue every year from state and local governments.
In addition to being exposed to even higher health risks from smoking, adolescents who use illicit tobacco may be at elevated risk for using narcotics. For example, a study of Canadian adolescents found that 9-12th grade students who used contraband tobacco were significantly more likely than other students who smoked to be using illegal substances including heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and club drugs such as MDMA. The nexus of the adolescent use of illicit tobacco with a wide range of crimes suggests that local law enforcement agencies may be able to help fill some of the gaps in the data on illicit tobacco use by adolescents if they are given the resources.
Virtually all adult smokers start as underage smokers. The best way to stop underage smoking is by stopping tobacco trafficking.
Federal efforts to stop underage smoking should be supplemented with,
- Education campaigns discussing the particular dangers of loosies, counterfeit cigarettes, and other forms of illicit tobacco, and
- Collaborating with local and state law enforcement agencies to collect and analyze data which could be used to develop more effective interventions against illicit tobacco vendors who sell cigarettes to underage smokers.
