"Well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions"

It's been a while since we had a laugh at Simon Chapman on this blog. He used to bring us so much entertainment. Australia's leading vaping prohibitionist is still knocking about in his nursing home shouting at clouds. He's been recently complaining about a "tsunami" of black market e-cigarettes. This is not a problem we have in Britain for some reason.

Hearing there's a tsunami of illegal cheap, disposable highly addictive nicotine vapes inundating Australian convenience stores with kiddie-friendly training wheel chemical flavours like these. In NSW you can log complaints here. They'll prosecute https://t.co/lp9ZO2tFBP Take pix pic.twitter.com/XXpfBdLZrG

— Simon Chapman AO (@SimonChapman6) March 25, 2021

Meanwhile, Australia's black market for real cigarettes continues to flourish. Industrial scale tobacco smuggling and vast illegal tobacco farms didn't exist Down Under until the government fell under the spell of Chapman and his buddies and made the legal product unaffordable and unattractive.

 

Here's a typical story from earlier this month.

 

Illicit tobacco crops worth more than $84m seized in raids near Murray River

Authorities say illicit tobacco crops seized and destroyed in raids on properties near the Murray River this month are among the biggest busts of their kind in Australia.

Officers from the multi-agency Illicit Tobacco Taskforce uncovered more than 40 hectares of the plant growing on properties either side of the Victoria-New South Wales border, near the regional centre of Swan Hill.

The tobacco's potential value was estimated at $84.3 million.

More than 183 tonnes of tobacco was found in the first of three raids on a property at Kyalite, in south-west NSW, which the Natural Resources Access Regulator also attended to investigate possible water theft.

 

183 tonnes!

 

And here's another from this month...

 

The Australian Border Force (ABF) led Illicit Tobacco Taskforce (ITTF) has disrupted the activities of two alleged organised crime syndicates involved in the importation and distribution of illicit tobacco throughout Victoria and Western Australia.

The first operation occurred on Wednesday and Thursday this week (10 & 11 March 2021) when ABF officers from the ITTF executed Customs Act 1901 search and seizure warrants at a number of residential and commercial properties in suburban Melbourne.

The targets allegedly belong to an organised crime syndicate that smuggles illicit molasses tobacco into Melbourne and distributes it throughout Victoria.

During the warrants approximately 1,000 kilograms of molasses tobacco was located and seized, along with jewellery and $100,000 in cash, alleged to be the proceeds of crime.

The estimated value of evaded duty for this amount of tobacco is more than $1.5 million dollars.

 

Somewhere there's an organised crime boss commissioning a gold statue of Simon Chapman. Where would they be without him?