Cigarette smugglers target children, claims new report
One in five cigarettes and roll-ups smoked in the West is smuggled, costing shopkeepers and taxpayers £211 million a year, shocking new statistics released today show.
And now the full weight of a range of authorities – from the police to the taxman – are launching a major crackdown on the illegal tobacco trade.
The smuggled cigarettes are cheaper than legitimate ones bought from a shop, which damages the fight by health authorities against smoking.
The crackdown features a partnership between the taxman, Smokefree South West – the Government agency targeting smoking – the police, Crimestoppers, primary care trusts and council chiefs.
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The South West HMRC said illegal tobacco brings criminals into local communities and into contact with children. “As well as being unregulated, illegal tobacco is often bought at ‘pocket money prices’, selling for less than half the tax-paid price of legally sold tobacco,” said south west HMRC spokesman Bob Gaiger. “This attracts younger smokers and allows those who could otherwise not afford to smoke, to maintain their habit and undermining their attempts to quit.”
Statistics showed that more than one in five smokers – or 21.4 per cent – in Wiltshire alone smoke either bootlegged, smuggled or counterfeit cigarettes. Nationally, HMRC showed the revenue lost to smuggled tobacco was £1.86 billion.
“The trade in illegal tobacco across the South West is a very real problem, one that through this partnership initiative we are tackling, but there is more still to be done,” added Mr Gaiger. “Illegal tobacco is often the first stage in a chain of illegal trades that fund criminality.
“These criminals smuggle tobacco and cigarettes illegally into the country. Some of these will be counterfeit and will have been manufactured in completely unregulated environments to be sold at knock-down prices. They do not care about the impact on local businesses, your neighbourhood or your children’s lives, targeting anyone and anywhere they can make money.”
Wiltshire’s health director Maggie Rae said: “Cigarettes and pouches of hand rolling tobacco are offered to our children at pocket money prices making it cheap and all too easy for our children to smoke and become addicted.
“The only people who benefit from this trade are the criminals who don’t care about what is in the packets they sell.
“Since illegal tobacco remains part of the range of smuggled and contraband goods traded by criminal gangs it is vital that steady, sustained pressure continues to be applied,” she added.
3 Comments
by nisakiman
Tuesday, February 26 2013, 4:11PM
“A completely predictable outcome, given the ridiculously punitive level of taxes levied on tobacco. And of course, once they introduce plain packs the levels of counterfeit tobacco on the streets will rise yet more. I know the 'consultation' is not complete yet, but that's just theatre for the masses to give the impression of a democratic process. They've already decided the outcome; they're not interested in any opinions which differ from their own.
The anti-tobacco zealots will continue to call for higher taxes and more restrictions because that's all they know how to do. And of course, that will result in more and cheaper counterfeit cigarettes on the market. It's well past time that these narrow-minded fools in the Tobacco Control Industry were de-funded and sent back to whence they came. They are a massive drain on society. They have destroyed the hospitality industry and put hundreds of thousands out of work. They have destroyed those secondary industries that serviced the 11,000 pubs that have closed since the smoking ban, and now they are trying to destroy the corner shops and newsagents who rely on cigarette sales for footfall.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C S Lewis
Never a truer word was spoken.
The Tobacco Control Industry cares nothing about health; this pogrom is about control. They twist and manipulate statistics and they lie through their teeth. They have destroyed so many lives with their myth of 'thousands dying from second-hand smoke', yet ask them to produce one, JUST ONE death certificate from anywhere in the world stating cause of death as being exposure to 'second-hand smoke', and they won't be able to. And the reason they won't be able to is because no-one has ever died from that cause. All their 'deaths' are theoretical, spat out by computer models that they themselves have programmed. These 'countless thousands of deaths' don't actually exist in the real world, only in their fevered imaginations.
A pestilence on all their houses.”
by nisakiman
Tuesday, February 26 2013, 4:09PM
“A completely predictable outcome, given the ridiculously punitive level of taxes levied on tobacco. And of course, once they introduce plain packs (I know the 'consultation' is not complete yet, but that's just theatre for the masses to give the impression of a democratic process. They've already decided the outcome; they're not interested in any opinions which differ from their own) the levels of counterfeit tobacco on the streets will rise yet more.
The anti-tobacco zealots will continue to call for higher taxes and more restrictions because that's all they know how to do. And of course, that will result in more and cheaper counterfeit cigarettes on the market. It's well past time that these narrow-minded fools in the Tobacco Control Industry were de-funded and sent back to whence they came. They are a massive drain on society. They have destroyed the hospitality industry and put hundreds of thousands out of work. They have destroyed those secondary industries that serviced the 11,000 pubs that have closed since the smoking ban, and now they are trying to destroy the corner shops and newsagents who rely on cigarette sales for footfall.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C S Lewis
Never a truer word was spoken.
The Tobacco Control Industry cares nothing about health; this pogrom is about control. They twist and manipulate statistics and they lie through their teeth. They have destroyed so many lives with their myth of 'thousands dying from second-hand smoke', yet ask them to produce one, JUST ONE death certificate from anywhere in the world stating cause of death as being exposure to 'second-hand smoke', and they won't be able to. And the reason they won't be able to is because no-one has ever died from that cause. All their 'deaths' are theoretical, spat out by computer models that they themselves have programmed. These 'countless thousands of deaths' don't actually exist in the real world, only in their fevered imaginations.
A pestilence on all their houses.”
by nisakiman
Tuesday, February 26 2013, 4:08PM
“A completely predictable outcome, given the ridiculously punitive level of taxes levied on tobacco. And of course, once they introduce plain packs (I know the 'consultation' is not complete yet, but that's just theatre for the masses to give the impression of a democratic process. They've already decided the outcome; they're not interested in any opinions which differ from their own) the levels of counterfeit tobacco on the streets will rise yet more.
The anti-tobacco zealots will continue to call for higher taxes and more restrictions because that's all they know how to do. And of course, that will result in more and cheaper counterfeit cigarettes on the market. It's well past time that these narrow-minded fools in the Tobacco Control Industry were de-funded and sent back to whence they came. They are a massive drain on society. They have destroyed the hospitality industry and put hundreds of thousands out of work. They have destroyed those secondary industries that serviced the 11,000 pubs that have closed since the smoking ban, and now they are trying to destroy the corner shops and newsagents who rely on cigarette sales for footfall.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C S Lewis
Never a truer word was spoken.
The Tobacco Control Industry cares nothing about health; this pogrom is about control. They twist and manipulate statistics and they lie through their teeth. They have destroyed so many lives with their myth of 'thousands dying from second-hand smoke', yet ask them to produce one, JUST ONE death certificate from anywhere in the world stating cause of death as being exposure to 'second-hand smoke', and they won't be able to. And the reason they won't be able to is because no-one has ever died from that cause. All their 'deaths' are theoretical, spat out by computer models that they themselves have programmed. These 'countless thousands of deaths' don't actually exist in the real world, only in their fevered imaginations.
A pestilence on all their houses.”