EDITORIAL — Get the smugglers

Not a week passes, it seems, without authorities seizing smuggled cigarettes.

The latest involved the seizure of 1,274 master cases of unregistered cigarettes during a raid on a storage facility in Valenzuela last Friday by a combined team from the Bureau of Internal Revenue and police Highway Patrol Group.

It was the first joint enforcement action this year against the illicit cigarette trade, according to the BIR. The master cases lacked the internal revenue stamp required under the National Revenue Code, indicating the non-payment of tobacco excise taxes.

As estimated by the BIR, the excise tax deficiency for the seized items amounted to nearly P517 million, including penalties and surcharges.

That’s a huge amount owed in taxes, so the commercial value of the illicit cigarettes is surely much larger. Who could be behind the smuggling?

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian believes politicians and rogue law enforcers are involved. The chair of the Senate finance committee has filed a resolution to conduct a probe, saying he had received information about politicians involved in the smuggling, particularly in Mindanao, with members of “security forces” serving as “financiers.”

As head of the ways and means committee in the previous Congress, Gatchalian learned from the BIR that excise tax collections had been declining steadily since 2021 as smuggled tobacco products flooded the market.

While registered cigarette sales have been declining, the market share of illicit cigarettes has been rising, Gatchalian noted.

“Tobacco smuggling can only happen with collusion between politicians and law enforcement agencies,” Gatchalian said, citing findings of the previous ways and means committee.

Politicians – particularly entrenched local kingpins – have long been suspected of involvement in the smuggling of a wide range of items, from guns and prohibited drugs to agricultural commodities and even motorcycles.

If the illicit items aren’t being waived through Bureau of Customs posts in exchange for grease money, they are being brought in through private ports that dot the country’s coastline.

The Philippines has the fifth most extensive coastline in the world, with a combined length of over 36,000 kilometers. Authorities have admitted the limited capability of the country to properly police coastal communities in an archipelago of 7,641 islands.

But it’s possible to track down those behind the smuggling of illicit cigarettes. By law, tobacco excise taxes must go to universal health care. Cigarette smuggling is depriving public health care of billions in funding. Those behind the illicit trade must be identified and punished.