Bangkok’s Smokers Searching Hard and Paying More for Their Cigarettes

By week’s end it was time for action, time perhaps for the Marlboro man.

Threats had not worked, nor pleading. So the TTM bunch rode to the rescue.

Thailand Tobacco Monopoly mobile units were sent into the city with aid for the smokeless, easing the agony of a weeklong cigarette shortage.

Bypassing the middlemen, whom the government blamed for the shortage, the mobile units sold directly to the distressed users, a maximum of five packs each. Relief operations were undertaken at the Klong Toey port area, near the Grand Palace and at Victory Monument.

But on Friday the word at most shops was the same: “My man said no deliveries till next week. Sorry.”

Bangkok has not gone cold turkey. Old customers and others willing to pay a premium can still find a pack or two, and some large stores still had supplies. But the strain was showing.

Hoarders Blamed

The shortage appeared suddenly, early in the week. Government spokesmen pointed the finger at wholesale distributors, saying they were hoarding their stocks in anticipation of an increase in excise taxes, when they could be sold at a higher price.

Some dealers, in turn, said that the government tobacco monopoly was restricting sales. The government responded that it was selling more cigarettes than normal.

Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Kosol Krairiksh warned that hoarders could face seven years imprisonment and a heavy fine.

As police and government officials checked dealers’ supplies in the capital and other cities, store shelves that five days earlier were stocked with packs of Samit, Krong Thip, Falling Rain and Royal Standard lay bare on Friday.

And at some retail outlets with supplies on hand, the price reportedly had gone up 20% or more.

With a new government tax package still under debate, relief seemed more than a millimeter away.