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Excerpts from State to sell smokes at delinquent-taxes auction

By Conrad deFiebre, Minneapolis Star Tribune [10/16/99]

The state of Minnesota, which has sued tobacco companies and runs programs to discourage smoking, will sell tobacco products next week at an auction of goods seized from a smoke shop for unpaid taxes.

The auction is required by state law, but "it is kind of a sticky wicket," Lynn Willenbring of the state Department of Revenue said Friday.

Up for bids next Saturday will be several thousand dollars worth of cigarettes, cigars and pipe and chewing tobacco seized Aug. 4 from the Smoke Shoppe and Book Nook in Brainerd, Minn. The store was shut down for delinquent tobacco and sales taxes of more than $11,000, Willenbring said.

The auction is getting a chilly reception from antismoking activists.

Revenue agents often seize "bootleg" cigarettes that don't have state tax stamps on their packages, Willenbring said. In those instances, they can be sold back to the manufacturers or destroyed. A third alternative, approved by state law, is to donate the bootleg smokes to state hospital patients.

The Brainerd inventory, fully stamped and with an estimated retail value of less than $5,000, was offered without success to several tobacco brokers, she said. That left a public auction as the only choice.

"We can't just sit on it," Willenbring said. "We can't destroy it. We seized it for the purpose of satisfying the tax."

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