We are amused by reports of a rampant black market in Ireland. The story is the same everywhere confiscatory tobacco taxes appear. Tax officials admit to the impossibility of measuring an underground market, but of course, they go ahead and state an official figure of 20% as the black market share of the total market in Ireland.
Anti makes up numbers about everything as we know. Certainly the black market is growing apace. Anti will admit that when it suits her: i.e. when demanding funds for interdiction of the illicit market. Out of the other side of her mouth, Anti will deny the facts when she prefers to claim that the market for legal cigarettes may be dwindling because of the fantastic success of her anti-smoker programs.
When it comes time to demand more anti-smoker programs, Anti blathers out of both sides of her mouth and the middle too, raving incoherently and simultaneously about her great success, and total failure, and declining and increasing smoking rates, and sixteenth-hand smoke, and whatever else afflicts her diseased mind. She rants, flails her arms, and always, many foolish people listen respectfully, and fund the pogrom some more.
In the meantime the black market keeps growing. Perhaps it has doubled in a year as the article we link with suggests. That’s good. Perhaps soon the black market share will reach one hundred per cent. Hooray. That’s not enough though. Perhaps you are not foolish and just maybe you are ready to go to war against Anti. Join us now.
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