Department of Justice July 28, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Justice is proposing to amend the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to implement certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (enacted March 9, 2006) relating to trafficking in contraband cigarettes or smokeless tobacco. The new law amends the Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act by: reducing the threshold amount of cigarettes necessary to trigger jurisdiction under the CCTA from a quantity in excess of 60,000 to a quantity in excess of 10,000; extending the provisions of the CCTA to cover contraband smokeless tobacco; imposing reporting requirements on persons, except tribal governments, who engage in delivery sales of more than 10,000 cigarettes or 500 single-unit consumer-sized cans or packages of smokeless tobacco in a single month; requiring that cigarettes and smokeless tobacco seized and forfeited under the CCTA be either used in law enforcement operations or destroyed; and by authorizing state and local governments, and Federal tobacco permittees to bring civil causes of action against violators of the CCTA.