The recent announcement that cigarette smoking in America is at a 55-year low was hailed as terrific news by public health zealots, but it was actually an event more worthy of a week that also saw the premier of a new season of “The Sopranos.” Whatever the new numbers show – and it isn’t even clear they show anything at all – the data almost certainly don’t demonstrate that high cigarette taxes have been working to reduce smoking. The real lesson here is that high cigarette taxes only lead to more crime.

The National Association of Attorneys General is trumpeting data from the Treasury Department showing that cigarette consumption fell 4% between 2004 and 2005. According to Treasury, Americans consumed 378.6 billion cigarettes in 2005, down from 525 billion in 1990. Although consumption had been gliding down for several years, Americans apparently started smoking noticeably less after the tobacco settlement of the late 1990s imposed new marketing restrictions while many states began levying ever higher taxes.

There’s more to those numbers than meets the eyes, however, because the figures from the attorneys general only count legally traded cigarettes, which, by definition, are the only cigarettes government record-keepers can track. The drive for higher excise on cigarettes has provided an incentive for smuggling and illegal sale of cigarettes. Sales are soaring for cigarettes that go untaxed, and thus uncounted. While the number of taxed packs of cigarettes sold per person each year has fallen dramatically over the past 15 years, the percentage of American adults who smoke has barely changed, according to a paper written for the Tax Foundation by Richard E. Wagner. Mr. Wagner has received research funding from tobacco companies in the past, but not for this project. Either American smokers are cutting back or they’re turning to Internet and illegal cigarette vendors.

Evidence points to the latter. By one count, up to 110,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes are smuggled into New York City each day, of which only 112,000 cartons are seized by law enforcement in a year. No wonder sales of taxed cigarettes have fallen by 50% or more since the combined state and city excise in New York shot up to $3.00 a pack. Mr. Wagner estimates that one truck can cart up to 480,000 packs at a time up Interstate 95 from North Carolina or Virginia to New York. If a smuggler buys those smokes at between $3 and $4 a pack down South and then sells them for closer to $7 in Manhattan, he can make a profit of nearly $2 million for one day’s work.

Not only does this deprive the government of revenue and foster general contempt for the law, but it also nurtures organized crime. Because of the logistical challenges involved, sophisticated crime networks control the bulk of the market for illegal cigarettes. Terrorists, too. In 2004, federal prosecutors won convictions against a smuggling ring connected to Hezbollah that had been running cigarettes from North Carolina to Michigan. Considering the low rates of detection, there’s no way of knowing how enmeshed terrorists or their associates are in cigarette smuggling elsewhere.

This is a tax policy problem, not an enforcement problem. A misguided prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s merely succeeded in playing into Al Capone’s hands. Today, prohibitive taxes on cigarettes are having a similar effect. If politicians want to try to convince voters that cigarette smoking is as damaging to society as heroin use or crack cocaine, they’re welcome to argue that a ban is worth the enforcement headaches. But cigarettes remain legal, and the latest data from the attorneys general, notwithstanding claims to the contrary, actually suggest that prohibition via taxation is only driving business to terrorists and the mob. That’s something for the lawmakers in Albany to mark as legislators start considering the governor’s request for yet another cigarette tax increase.