Modest approach to tackling smuggling

Spain’s proposed budget includes a measure to reduce further the tobacco allowances for certain categories of people arriving from Gibraltar, according to a story by Brian Reyes for the Gibraltar Chronicle.
The budget, which is still to be debated and approved by parliament, would cut the number of cigarettes that frontier workers and residents of the Campo de Gibraltar of Spain can carry into Spain during any given month by over half.

The limit on the quantity of cigarettes that could be carried into Spain from Gibraltar by people living within a radius of 15 km of the border had already been reduced from three cartons a month to one carton a month.

Now, it is proposed, the limit should be further reduced to four packs a month.

The Spanish government reportedly said the move was necessary to tackle a rise in the ‘abuse’ of existing tobacco allowances by ‘frontier residents and frontier workers’ leaving Gibraltar.

There was no mention of how reducing the legal allowance by one pack a month would tackle the abuse of the existing system.