The strange case of Rudolph, a Green community website, and Forest
The Chancellor has already said that he intends to increase tobacco taxation by inflation plus two percent (the so-called tobacco escalator).
Not content with this, the tobacco control industry wants the price of tobacco to go up by five per cent above inflation (ie 2p per cigarette).
The last Chancellor to do that was Gordon Brown and he jumped off the escalator like a scalded cat when he saw how much money the Treasury was losing to smugglers, counterfeiters and cross-channel shoppers (about £3 billion a year).
Yesterday BBC News ran this story: Budget 2012: Calls for '2p a cigarette' rise. It concluded with a quote from me.
However, Simon Clark, from Forest, the smokers' lobby group, said that a 5% increase above inflation would produce an "economic madhouse", and cause an explosion in smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes.
He said: "Ideally we'd like to see a reduction in duty, but the next best thing would be a freeze on tobacco duty, so that's what we're hoping for."
In response, I assume, to that somewhat bland comment, a petition has been posted on a Green community website calling on HM Government to Prosecute Simon Clark and FOREST for threatening to take criminal action to undermine the law of the [land]. It reads:
FOREST (the smoking junkies "rights" group") have implicitly said they will support people who turn to smuggling if tobacco price duty is raised (to help pay for the health costs incurred from their nasty little habit.) Remember it is not just direct smokers who suffer but secondary smokers who get the benefit of - for example - their parents habit. Smuggling is a serious criminal offence. Potential smugglers, amateur or professional, should bear this in mind before doing so and risking several years in jail.
The petitioner, Rudolf Affolter (?!), adds:
I have really said it all in creating this petition but I wish to reiterate that Simon Clark is implicitly urging smokers to take part in criminal activity; and that is in itself a criminal offence.
I'm not sure that warning government of the counter-productive effect of increasing taxation is the same as "urging smokers to take part in criminal activity", but tobacco control activists (even the sane ones) are hardly renowned for sticking to the facts.
Anyway, according to his profile Rudolf is "Green, pacifist, humanist, human rights activist, extreme Left-wing (in genuine sense)". He is a vegan and is politically "very liberal". He is also "loving, caring and compassionate".
As I write the petition has attracted the support of two people, one of whom is Rudolph. Watch this space.