How Many Law Enforcement Agencies Does it Take to Investigate One Smoke Shop For "Untaxed Tobacco Products"?

Federal officials executed a search warrant for Cigar and Tobacco Emporium Smoke Shop in Attleboro, Massachusetts, today. According to WPRI, investigators confiscated several crates of what might have been "untaxed tobacco products." How many federal agencies were involved in this investigation?

Eyewitness News was on scene at the Cigar and Tobacco Emporium Smoke Shop where officials including Massachusetts State Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, IRS, and Homeland Security personnel were on-hand.

Previously:

How Many Law Enforcement Agencies Does it Take to Shut Down Three Podunk Head Shops?

How Many Law Enforcement Agencies Does it to Take to Prosecute One Man for Buying $200 Worth of Crack?

Comments

[fish]

NOOOOOOOOOO! Not untaxed tobacco products!?!?

This country deserves to fail!

[TELLMOFF]

Nazi America must be destroyed like Nazi Germany was destroyed.

[Jerry on the road]

You know who also didn't like smoke shops?

[fish]

Bloomberg?

[Kaptious Kristen]

Soccer moms?

[fish]

Who said anything about destroyed? Nations this stupid fail. Sometimes they fail in short order.

[TELLMOFF]

How many cases of police abuse does it take before a libertarian declares his hatred for the government and those loyal to it?

[Heroic Mulatto]

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.

[BakedPenguin]

Each LE agency gets to add those statistics into their own year end numbers as a "successful" operation, to justify getting more money.

The only reason the DEA and FBI weren't there is that they've already been approved for their next year budgets, and they have plenty of stolen seized money and goods to play with already.

[GILMORE]

You're forgetting the overtime too. Un. Limited.

[Broseph of Invention]

I quiver just thinking about what might have happened had but one agency failed to appear. Without DHS, who would have kept the Arabs in line when buying their Marlboro Reds? What other than the keen eye of an IRS agent could spot a bookkeeping ledger?

[WLC]

Taxed, untaxed, whatever *keeps loading boxes into police vans*. The hard part is keeping the various agencies happy with their cut.

[Sigivald]

BATFE does Tobacco.

IRS does tax enforcement in general.

DHS does customs - if any of it was imported, they have jurisdiction.

Part of doing a prosecution right involves having the interested parties participate, so that whoever's investigating and not part of the bodies in question doesn't miss something they;d need to do their jobs.

So the problem is not that three agencies and the local law were involved, so much as that we have such high tobacco taxes that people want to cheat on them that badly.

(At least it's not a Constitutional issue, since excise taxes are specifically allowed.)

[John Tagliaferro]

They should have hired some untaxed Indians as guards. Something more effective than those Marxist Wounded Knee Indians.

[mad libertarian guy]

Homeland Security?

Untaxed cigs are now under the purview of DHS?

The only logical thing to do is to nuke the DHS from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[box_man]

Can't verify it independently, but I am 90% certain that this is a shop that operates a roll your own machine. It let's users by tobacco in bulk and then use the machines to make their cigarettes. It ends up being way cheaper (about $3 a pack) and doesn't elicit the same taxes as those found on cigarettes from manufacturers. A lot of smokers are starting to use them (and Massachusetts has some of the highest taxes on cigs) precisely because of the cost savings over manufactured taxed cigarettes. The states are having fits because of the lost tax revenue and it is becoming really significant. To top it off, the cig manufacturers are helping to lobby (ie spreading around money) to get state laws changed so that they don't lose their market to the RYO machines by making sure the RYO has to pay the same tax. So it doesn't surprise me that a whole lotta law enforcement showed up for this one - there's serious money at stake here.

It's a bad day for liberty when you see government and companies conspire together to screw the little guy so hard.