From: The Public Policy & Governance Review
Jennifer Yi
In 2014, Statistics Canada reported that 18.1 per cent of Canadians are smokers. Ontario was below the national average at 17.4 percent coming in third only to Manitoba and British Columbia. Smoking in Ontario is at an all-time low that has seen a consistent decrease by 0.8 per cent year over year since 2011. In a Forum Research poll, more than half of the respondents between the ages of 18-24 claimed to be non-smokers. If the polls are to be believed, smoking has declined among all Ontarians, particularly among young people, thanks to a comprehensive provincial initiative for smoking cessation.
While slowly and surely, smoking rates have declined, contraband tobacco is an issue that has become noticeably worse over the decades. Smuggled Canadian brand cigarettes began to appear on the market in 1990 when duty-free cigarettes destined for the United States made their way, illegally, back to Canada. In 1994, a drastic cut in excise tax (50 per cent) by the federal governments and (67 per cent) by the provincial governments prompted smuggling of contraband tobacco to decline. Yet, as taxes rebounded from the rollback, sales of legal cigarettes dropped by 10 percent in 2002 and continue to fall steadily. Illegal cigarettes, on the other hand, climbed upwards at point in 2002 when the RCMP had reportedly seized nearly one million cartoons of illegal cigarettes. Some experts estimate that contraband cigarettes make up about 10 per cent of the Canadian market while other experts contend that this figure is higher than one third of the cigarettes within Ontario. There are no readily available statistics on the numbers of illicit cigarettes in the market, but the Ontario government believes the loss in tax revenue adds up to an estimated $1.1 billion annually. Cigarettes that are illegally sourced are sold either in clear plastic bags with no-name brands or have no federal stamps containing safety features.
