This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal August 1, 2025.

California isn’t only the No. 1 state for illegal immigrants. It’s also the top state for illegal cigarettes. The reason is clear: heavy-handed government. The Golden State has banned some popular cigarettes while jacking up taxes on the smokes that remain. The result has been a rise in crime, lost revenue and yet another lesson in unintended—yet entirely predictable—consequences.

More than half of cigarettes smoked in California—53%, to be exact—evaded or avoided the state’s cigarette mandates and levies. That’s a stunning rise from a decade ago, when 28% of cigarettes were smuggled into the Golden State. It also takes California past New York, where we estimate that 52% of cigarettes are smuggled.

What changed? A 2017 California law raised the cigarette tax from 87 cents to $2.87, which gave smokers an incentive to find cheaper options—which out-of-state and transnational smugglers were more than happy to provide. California then banned menthol cigarettes, which make up roughly a third of the nation’s cigarette sales, along with other flavored tobacco products, in late 2022.

Cue the rapid rise in crime. In May, Customs and Border Protection officials in Southern California confiscated 150,000 illegal cigarettes from cruise-ship passengers disembarking from Mexico. In April the state attorney general charged five people with a $24 million tax fraud for allegedly illegally importing untaxed cigarettes. But these smoke busts are the exception to the rule. Most smuggled cigarettes make it into consumers’ hands.

We aren’t the only researchers to conclude that California has a smuggling problem. A 2022 study found that even before the menthol ban and $2 tax hike, 36% of respondents said they had brought cigarettes into California from elsewhere in the previous year. A 2023 study of discarded cigarette packs conducted across California found that of 15,000 cigarette packs collected, 45% didn’t bear the state’s tax stamp.

Cigarette smuggling isn’t the only unintended consequence of high taxes. Across the country, heavy-handed cigarette policies have led to delivery-truck heists, armed retail thefts, and even a murder-for-hire plot. It’s likely that similar crimes are happening in California. The state’s higher taxes and broader bans make smuggling especially lucrative, thereby increasing the likelihood of more brazen lawbreaking.

The Golden State’s policies also encourage public corruption. Last year a former prison guard was indicted for his role smuggling tobacco into Solano State Prison, near Sacramento. The state struggles to keep tobacco, narcotics and cellphones out of prisons. What makes its leaders think they can keep a tidal wave of illicit cigarettes and other nicotine products out of the hands of nonincarcerated Californians? California has many major ports, bonded warehouses, the Mexican border, and nearby states with lower tax rates, all of which can be exploited by smugglers to save or make a buck at California’s expense.

Lower-taxed states are a major source of cigarettes to high-taxed ones. Wyoming’s smuggling export rate is 55%. Idaho’s is 28%. In other words, for every 100 cigarettes consumed in those states, an additional 55 and 28, respectively, are bought there and smuggled into other states. It doesn’t strain credulity to suggest that many of these lower-taxed smokes end up in California. As far back as 2003 Californians were busted shipping illegal cigarettes in from as far away as Virginia. Even at that distance illegal trade is profitable.

California isn’t alone in suffering from high levels of inbound cigarette smuggling. New York is second because of its own heavy-handed policies and its proximity to low-tax Virginia. Massachusetts, with its high taxes and ban on flavored tobacco and other nicotine products, is ranked third. These states may think they’re improving public health, but smoking hasn’t meaningfully declined, while crime is on the rise. In the war on smoking, common sense is losing.

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