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UPDATE: State preparing to auction contraband smokes
by The Associated Press
2 years ago | 857 views | 4 4 comments | 9 9 recommendations | email to a friend | print
JACKSON — Mississippi is planning to auction about 855,000 cartons of contraband cigarettes as early as September.

A new law allows the auditor's office and State Tax Commission to speed up sales and open the auction to out-of-state vendors.

In April, a task force discovered thousands of cases of cigarettes in a warehouse in Mississippi. In May, the task force searched a distributing company in Tupelo.

The FBI said the raids are part of an ongoing investigation into a tobacco black market with ties to Mississippi, Kentucky and South Carolina.

The estimated value of the seized cigarettes is $20 million. State officials say their sale could yield more than $5 million in unpaid state taxes.

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boatox
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July 05, 2009
If the feds and the state are both crying that what is wrong with out medicade / medicare is smokers thats why they raised the tax on cigaretts, Well why are we not distroying the contraband cigs.
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boatox
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July 05, 2009
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DocJ
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July 05, 2009
Demo tax machine? Must be forgetting that the repub tax machine is the one who was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry for all those years and fought the tobacco tax increases tooth and nail until it was obvious he couldn't over-ride the goo old dem's anymore....
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amego
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July 04, 2009
You want people to stop smoking, So now what does the state do? They want to auction cigarettes. so they can get the good old tax dollars, If I was a smoker I would tell the state and the demo tax machine what they could do with their cigarettes.
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