Aren't 41 Years of Killing Enough?

A Colombian institution is about to disappear - and good riddance!

Mustang cancer sticks are becoming Rothmans.

Mustang cigarettes, which have been sickening and killing low-income Colombians for more than four decades, are finally going away. But don't celebrate yet: Mustang is to be replaced by BAT's Rothmans brand.

Vice published a nostalgic article about the Mustang brand's 'Colombianness' - even tho Mustangs are manufactured in Chile, and naming a cigarette after a North American horse doesn't exactly scream 'Colombia.'

Young men smoking. Today's young addicts
are customers until smoking kills them.

BAT claims the name change comes because its customers 'demand a more globalized brand.' In fact, the low-income Colombians who tend to smoke Mustangs don't care about much except price. And BAT is apparently making the switch in order to save money by having to print fewer types of boxes. Addicts, they figure, will be loyal customers.

Selling cigarettes
alongside candies.

Colombia seems like a desireable market for Big Tobacco. According to official statistics, tobacco consumption is slowly declining - but that's hard to say, since many cigarettes are smuggled into Colombia (often, apparently, with tobacco companies' collaboration. Reportedly, most of Colombia's smuggled cigarettes come from Paraguayan factories owned by that nation's president). Colombia does require dramatic visual warnings on cigarette packs, but other anti-smoking policies have been pointless: A 2011 law prohibiting the sale of loose cigarettes is so widely ignored that you can buy 'loosies' on nearly every corner in central Bogotá, making it cheap and easy for kids to become addicted, and guaranteeing tobacco companies a future market. The sale of single cigarettes also means that many smokers never see those graphic health warnings.

It's easy for kids to buy smokes from street vendors.

And the prohibition on advertising cigarettes is made a joke by cigarette 'displays' in many stores featuring huge packs. A 2016 ruling requiring cigarette packs to be hidden in stores has not been enforced.

Meanwhile, some 25,000 Colombians die every year from smoking-related illnesses, according to the government, and innumerable more lose quality of life from tobacco's diseases.

A man lights up a loosie just purchased from a street vendor. 

Brass cigarettes, one of many cheap smuggled brands.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Commerce Equals Crime?

'I'm a storekeeper, not a criminal.'

Owners and employees of the San Andresitos and other businesses with a reputation for selling contraband products marched down Calle 13 today protesting a proposed law which would stiffen punishments for selling contraband goods or having links to money laundering. 

The sellers charge that the law equates doing retail business with criminality. But not all commerce is criminal, just that which doesn't pay taxes or follow laws.

The trouble for the San Andresitos is a simple one: Their cheap cheapo business model is based on one thing: contraband goods, and many of those are linked to money laundering.

Tough luck for them. But they should look at the bright side - the government has never effectively enforced such laws, and they're unlikely to do so this time.

Riot police on Calle 13.

The law, yes, but not this way.

United for the right to work.

Waving the flag on Plaza San Victorino.

'For the right to work. A law with social justice.'

The San Andresitos on Calle 13 were closed, for once.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Outlaw Economy

San Andresitos workers fill Simon Bolivar plaza in protest against an anti-contraband law.

They're scattered across Bogotá, with names like San Victorino and San Andresitos - the latter named

Protesters wearing shirts charging that the anti-contraband
law would mean monopolies and destroy small businesses. 

after Colombia's Caribbean island of San Andres, which are notorious for smuggling. These stores' cheap imported goods carry a reputation for being contraband and often serving for laundering drug money.

At least, that's what many authorities believe. And perhaps the best evidence that they're right came the other day when thousands of owners and employees of the San Andresitos filled San Victorino and Simon Bolivar plazas with a deafening protest against a law raising penalties and jail terms for buying and selling contraband goods.

Colombia's huge contraband industry might seem innocent enough: It provides cheap imported running shoes, electronics and refrigerators, not to mention all of the gasoline consumed in regions near the Venezuelan border. It also employs many thousands of Colombians.

San Andresitos stores on Calle 13 in Bogota.

However, cheap smuggled goods don't pay taxes, depriving the state of money for schools, roads and police and hurt domestic manufacturing. This is felt particularly in provincial health programs, which are financed by duties and taxes on cigarettes and whiskey - two heavily smuggled items. The cheap, smuggled, untaxed products are also particularly cheap, placing them within the reach of children.

However, contraband's worst impact might be its role in money laundering. Drug cartels find it difficult bringing their illegal millions in profits back into Colombia thru the banking system. So, they convert them into legal goods, which may be either legally imported or smuggled in thru places like the La Guajira peninsula and marketed in the San Andresitos.

For years during the late 1990s and early 2000s, cigarette makers Philip Morris and British

Cigarettes, many of them smuggled, for sale
next to candy in La Candelaria.
Many of the boxes carry warnings in
English instead of he required
Colombian ones.

American Tobacco facilitated cigarette smuggling into Colombian, flooding the country with cheap smokes and helping terrorist groups launder drug money, according to investigators and Colombian government officials.

The San Andresito businesses skirt around the fact that so many of their products lack documentation. But, if those products aren't illegal, why are the San Andresito people so up in arms against it?

That cheap camera, pair of jeans or MP3 player may not be so innocent.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Set-Up´for Cigarette Smuggling?

Cigarettes for sale on a Bogotá street alongside chips and candy.

Ship Colombian tobacco leaves to Chile to make them into cigarettes to ship back to Colombia?

Executives of British American Tobacco (BAT), which is closing its Bogotá cigarette factory, could probably give very convincing-sounding reasons why it makes economic sense to ship Colombian tobacco leaves to the other end of the continent, roll them up in paper tubes, and then ship them back to Colombia for sale.

Maybe labor is cheaper or more efficient in Chile. Maybe the weather is better there. Maybe Chile's famous cigarette-making tradition means that Chilean-made smokes are higher quality.

But, despite the corporation's arguments, the new arrangement sounds suspicious.

It was not many years ago that, according to investigative journalists and Colombian provincial governments, BAT and its U.S. rival Philip Morris conspired with violent, outlaw organizations to get their cigarettes smuggled into Colombia. Smuggled cigarettes are cheaper, since they don't pay taxes, and are particularly accessible to kids who are just getting hooked on the habit. In addition, the smuggled cigarettes were allegedly used to launder narcotrafficking money.

The companies settled the lawsuit and later purchased Colombia cigarette makers. The big tobacco companies said that they were now combating contraband - which made sense, since it hurt their domestic Colombian cigarette-making business.

Contraband has continued, however, and perhaps even increased again, so that today it is estimated at 15 - 20% of the market. Recently, according to El Tiempo, contraband cigarettes made by the Paraguayan firm Tabacalera del Este - which is owned by Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes - have flooded into Colombia. At least one Colombian department, Bolivar, has filed suit against the Paraguayan company, alleging that it is promoting cigarette smuggling and facilitating money laundering by narcotraffickers.

Those cheap, smuggled smokes hit BAT's market particularly hard, because it makes the low-cost brand Mustang.

Will BAT's Chilean-made, Colombian-leaf smokes enter Colombia legally or via contraband?

It will be worth Colombian officials' time - and their tax revenue - to find out.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Gunning Fast and Furiously to Colombia

Smuggled guns: Headed toward Colombia?

Fast and Furious was a United States anti-gun-smuggling operation intended to uncover gun smuggling routes into Mexico. But it went terribly wrong when some 1,400 weapons apparently went missing, according to CNN, and several appeared at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

And now, several of the operation's weapons have reportedly surfaced in Colombia, in the hands of the violent drug-smuggling operation known as the Oficina de Envigado.

U.S. authorities messed this operation up badly. However, it still shows how far illegal guns go - all the way from the U.S. border to Colombia, where they just keep on killing.

Rational control of gun sales in the U.S. would not only save lives in the States, but also in Mexico, Colombia and many other nations.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia's OTHER Smuggling Problem

Scotland's Dream, Colombia's Problem?

Just imagine the frustration: You're a big-time drug cartel boss; you've managed to smuggle a load of cocaine to the United States or Europe and sell it for millions. You bribed and smuggled your load across borders, past civil and military authorities and rival gangs and even escaped the hazards of storms and floods along the way. Now your cool millions are in friendly hands over there in New York, Miami or Madrid...but that won't do you much good, since your employees, supplies and the mansion you want to buy are all back here in Colombia (or Peru or Venezuela or Bolivia...)

So, what's an ambitious drug boss to do?

The situation's not so easy, particularly with authorities on the lookout for travelers with tens of thousands of dollars strapped to their bodies and for big, unexplained bank transfers. But, fortunately for our protagonist, there is a solution, in an elegant combination of money laundering and money smuggling.

Here's what you do: Your employees set up an import-export company on some Carribean island where authorities ask few questions and appreciate a nice new Roles every now and then. That company buys merchandise - exactly what matters little - and ships it to Colombia (or Peru or Bolivia...), where it's all sold. Now, you've got your money inside the country, as well as a good story for how you got that money. The system's so good that you might not even care much if you sell your product at a loss. After all, you made a ton on the drug sale, and the main thing is to get your hands on your money. So, you can afford to be generous.

In Colombia, such schemes have been carried out with with products such as weapons, cigarettes, liquors and even such hum-drum items as dishwashers. To secretly import his wealth, one entrepeneur imported tools such as hammers and wrenches, but filled them with gold. (Imagine the happy surprise for someone who bought a used hammer at a flea market and then accidentally broke it apart.)

Smuggling's in the news now because of government reports that more than three-quarters of the liquor consumed in Colombia is contraband, as are many cigarettes. That means lots of damage: it hurts honest local businesses, deprives government of taxes (which finance public health services) and artificially lowers the costs of those liquors and cigarettes, luring more kids in particular to start smoking and drinking.

Many of these boxes lack the required graphic warning -
does that mean they were smuggled in?

Perhaps the most sinister part of this is the information gathered some years ago by the Center for Public Integrity and others indicating that big tobacco companies conspired to get their products smuggled into Colombia, where they were often used to bring in drug profits. The tobacco companies say they have no control over where their products are eventually sold - even though they shipped huge quantities of cigarettes to tiny Carribean islands. At the same time, they were apparently encouraging smuggling, the tobacco companies were also arguing to the Colombian government that the smuggling showed that tobacco taxes were too high. Oh, pity those poor cancer sellers!

Around the world, tobacco smuggling has been documented as a funding source for terror groups, just as has happened with Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries. Last year, tobacco product smuggling reportedly doubled, costing the government several million dollars in taxes.

Colombian provincial governments sued tobacco companies for their lost tax money, and eventually settled out of court. Now, however, it all appears to be happening again.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours