After a year of silence, where NSW has witnessed a dramatic increase in illegal tobacco shops and associated criminal violence, Chris Minns on Monday finally offered up a solitary idea to fix the problem \u2013 \u201cmake cigarettes cheaper\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yesterday, the Federal Treasurer shot down the Premier\u2019s idea saying he didn\u2019t think making cigarettes cheaper was the answer and that the focus needed to be on compliance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leader of the Opposition Mark Speakman said that under Chris Minns, NSW has become the Chop Chop capital of Australia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIllegal tobacco businesses have exploded under Chris Minns, and organised criminal gangs are raking in big money, because they know NSW has minimal enforcement and some of the weakest penalties in the country.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile other states have acted to drastically increase penalties and improve enforcement, Chris Minns has been missing in action. Now that the Federal Treasurer has ruled out changes to the federal excise, Chris Minns needs to tell people how he is going to tackle this issue,\u201d said Mr Speakman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shadow Minister for Health Kellie Sloane said Chris Minns has only woken up to this issue after illegal tobacco shops started popping up in his own electorate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been telling the Minns Government for a year that this is a serious issue, but they have been dragging their feet. The Opposition have pushed for stronger illegal tobacco penalties, a fit and proper person test to stop criminals getting tobacco licences and a parliamentary inquiry into this issue,\u201d said Ms Sloane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shadow Minister for Regional Health Gurmesh Singh says regional communities are bearing the brunt of the tobacco wars and Chris Minns needed to step up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen fire bombings, stand over tactics, violence and legitimate small businesses put under pressure due to the rise in illegal tobacco. The lack of enforcement in regional communities means that these criminals can illegal tobacco with little fear of getting caught.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shadow Minister for Police Paul Toole said once again the NSW Police Force are being called in as the last line of defence to pick up the slack because of the failures of the Minns Labor Government and NSW Health to deal with illegal tobacco here in this state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe NSW Labor Government is treating the NSW Police Force like a dogsbody to pick up the pieces after other agencies fail to their job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NSW Police force is stretched paper-thin and passing the buck to the police cannot be this Government\u2019s answer to every issue,\u201d Mr Toole said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a year of silence, where NSW has witnessed a dramatic increase in illegal tobacco shops and associated criminal violence, Chris Minns on Monday finally offered up a solitary idea to fix the problem \u2013 \u201cmake cigarettes cheaper\u201d. Yesterday, the Federal Treasurer shot down the Premier\u2019s idea saying he didn\u2019t think making cigarettes cheaper was … Continue reading “Minns\u2019 one idea on illegal tobacco goes up in smoke”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33095,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33094\/revisions\/33095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}