Monthly Archives: January 2016

From: Vice

Inuit Smoking Rates in Canada Are Worse Than the National Average in the 1950s

By Jake Kivanc

Canada’s North is facing a health crisis, as skyrocketing cancer rates amongst its Indigenous peoples are far and away the highest in the world, according to a new international study.

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Across Canada, cigarette prices generally stay the same — $8 to $10 CAD per pack — but Cunningham told VICE News that one of the main problems in Northern Canada is that contraband cigarettes are easily obtainable. . .  .

From: UTV.ie

9.5 million contraband cigarettes were seized by Revenue officers in the past week in operations in Dublin, Meath and Tipperary.
Story by Céimin Burke

On Wednesday morning Revenue officers searched a house in Cashel, Co Tipperary, and seized over 39,000 ‘MG’ brand cigarettes. A man in his 40s was questioned and a file is currently being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

6.6 million cigarettes were seized at a warehouse in Co. Meath. The container of “Royale Pacific” brand cigarettes originated in Vietnam, and had arrived into Dublin Port on Monday, from Rotterdam. The smuggled cigarettes were described as “Shower room linen baskets” on the manifest.

From: TUOI TRE NEWS

Large volumes of cigarettes are being smuggled from Cambodia to Vietnam as the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday approaches, despite Vietnamese authorities’ efforts to deter the situation.

Officers in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang have recently busted the largest ever cigarette smuggling operation, confiscating 18,500 packs of tobacco, Colonel Le Quoc Viet, captain of the local border guards, affirmed on Wednesday.

At 9:00 pm on Tuesday, police spotted two speedboats with suspicious signs traveling from Cambodia to Vietnam in the waters off of An Phu District, An Giang. They decided to surround the targets and carry out an inspection.

From: Newsday

By Robert E. Kessler

Rodney Morrison,  above, a former cigarette magnate on the Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic, has been sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in federal prison for conspiracy to sell bootleg cigarettes. (Credit: Handout)   

A former cigarette magnate on the Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic has been sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in federal prison in a scheme to sell bootlegged cigarettes, officials said, putting an end to a case that had stretched on for more than a decade.

Read Complete Article (paywall)

From: Yale Daily News

Infant ingests PCP-laced cigarette

Caitlyn Wherry

On Jan. 19, emergency medical technicians hurried an 18-month-old boy to Yale-New Haven Hospital after he consumed a phencyclidine-laced cigarette belonging to his father.

Police arrived at Brookside/West Hills apartments last week after a 27-year-old mother called the New Haven Police Department to report that she believed her baby to be high. In a press release published last week, the parents said the infant was “acting oddly — as if he was high” before he fell unconscious. The mother said she smelled phencyclidine, a hallucinogenic commonly referred to as PCP, on the child’s breath. She added that the contraband cigarettes were available in their home and within the child’s reach. . . .