Massachusetts law enforcement officials made hundreds of thousands of seizures of illegal tobacco products smuggled into the state last year, according to a new report.
A state law signed by Governor Charlie Baker in 2019 banned the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored vape products as of June, 2020. But the report, by the state Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force, says those products are being bought out of state and illegally sold in Massachusetts.
In 2021, state police and the Department of Revenue made 213,550 seizures of vape products, which the report refers to as “electronic nicotine delivery systems.”
"The increase in seizures of flavored [vape] products and menthol cigarettes combined with the decrease in revenue for cigarettes and [other tobacco products] likely indicates increased cross-border smuggling of these products," the report says, noting that neighboring states, including New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, reported an increase in tobacco revenue last year.
"The Task Force now identifies the cross-border smuggling of untaxed flavored [vape] products, cigars, and menthol cigarettes as the primary challenge for tobacco enforcement in the Commonwealth," the report concludes.
The trade group representing many of the stores that sell tobacco products says it's not surprised by the report.
"We knew this would happen because there was demand for these products," said Jonathan Shaer, executive director of the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association. Shaer's group lobbied against the law that banned menthol cigarettes and flavored vape products because of the loss of revenue for Massachusetts stores.
"You've got adults that have the ability to go and access these products legally in other states," he said. "But what also we knew is that there was an existing illegal market for tobacco already... And when you vacate a market worth hundreds of millions of dollars and you've already got participants in that space, we had no doubt that they were going to fill that void."
The new report details several illegal tobacco busts, including a Springfield man indicted last March for smuggling tobacco in from Connecticut, totaling $4 million in unpaid excise taxes, and a search warrant in Brockton last month that uncovered nearly 6,000 flavored vape products.
Prior to the state ban, Shaer added, the sale of these products was highly regulated, and there's now less control of what products customers are buying off the black market.
"Now, a year and a half later, not only has the data proven that it's been a failure, but now this report confirms that we've got a real problem, that the state unfortunately is not equipped to address," he said.
Anti-tobacco activists argue the ban has been a success.
Allyson Perron Drag of the American Heart Association says the main goal of the ban wasn't to stop current tobacco users from accessing the products.
"It was to stop a new generation of being addicted to it, which the industry and their allies like the convenience stores, were doing," said Perron Drag, who's also a member of the advocacy group Tobacco Free Mass. "They were marketing and hooking children on this deadly product. Kids that would have never used traditional cigarettes. They were using them because they were flavored... If the exposure to kids is not there anymore, so they're not seeing these products in convenience stores and in places that they're able to go into, I would say that is a success."
For current tobacco users, Perron Drag notes that the legislation that banned the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored vape products also mandated that all insurance cover smoking cessation costs.
"The convenience stores want the narrative to say [the ban is] a failure because they've been fighting it in other places," she added. "And so they don't want to see it look like a success in Massachusetts."
