Few examples sum up Australia in 2024 better than the seemingly unstoppable Middle Eastern tobacco wars raging across the country.
Criminal immigrants are wreaking havoc in our cities while making billions of dollars, while the police arrest non-violent locals for hand gestures or T-shirts, the economy bleeds money, legal businesses struggle, and normal Australians struggle to afford homes.
Most of us just want to live quiet, peaceful lives, and only 8.3% of us poison ourselves with cigarettes daily.
Smoking costs the economy more than $136 billion a year in treatment and lost productivity, but at the same time the government earns $12.7 billion from tobacco taxes, with another 2.3 billion lost to the illicit market according to the most recent figures.
There is no good reason, then, why the government would not want to crack down on illegal tobacco and add billions to their coffers.
There is even an argument for banning tobacco products altogether, since most people don’t smoke anyway and it would have massive economic and health benefits.
But the situation we find ourselves in today is very different.
Rather than using state power to crush the illegal tobacco smugglers and sellers, our police and government have decided to let them run amok.
There have been more than 120 firebombings in Melbourne since 2023, with similar conflicts erupting in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, and several different parts of New South Wales.
This has been allowed to continue to the point that illegal tobacco sellers now have a stunning 36% market share – more than any single legal operator. This is up from 28% last year, and 23% the year before that.
It has cost one small supermarket chain $150 million in lost sales over the same period, and legal retailers are increasingly deciding to stock illegally imported smokes since they cannot compete otherwise.
To make matters worse, none of the criminals behind the tobacco war are Australian, and very few of the retailers are either – this is a problem almost entirely imported from the Middle East and Asia.
Asians bring the black market cigarettes in, and the Lebanese and Iraqis sell them to tobacconists and convenience stores run by more Asians, Arabs, Afghans, Persians, Turks, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese and every other non-European ethnicity you can name.
In Melbourne some of the names involved in the gang war are Haddara, Hamad, Marrogi, Alibadi, Barakat, Jabal, Nassar, Jassem, Isse, Bi, Nguyen, Tran, Lee, and Hoang.
In Adelaide five men named Al Mansoury, Ali and Khadem were arrested last month.
Just like the problems of Islamic terrorism and African machete attacks, this tobacco war is one we wouldn’t have if our traitorous politicians hadn’t decided to import hundreds of thousands of violent third worlders against the will of the people.
And now that they are here, they get to rake in millions by breaking the law, are given short sentences or are granted bail, and because they are so violent and aggressive the undermanned and woke police prefer to focus on giving free driving lessons to other immigrants instead of enforcing the law.
A loyal and effective government could end the tobacco wars with ease – let the mass deportations begin.
And as an added bonus we’d get less crime in general, less litter, less NDIS and insurance fraud (and lower premiums), less terrorism, higher wages, lower housing prices, lower rents, fewer car accidents, fewer annoying protests, and more social cohesion.
Header image: Convicted tobacco importers Dib and Hassan Barakat
