Virginia State Crime Commission: “counterfeit cigarettes present a serious public health risk.”

Editor’s Note:  The Virginia State Crime Commission report “Illegal Cigarette Trafficking” is attached here.

From the report:

To achieve lower costs, traffickers can arrange for their cigarettes to be manufactured overseas. Frequently, these cigarettes are counterfeits. The packaging used in popular brands of cigarettes is duplicated; however, the cigarettes inside will differ substantially from the genuine articles. A number of recent studies have reported that the manufacturing facilities used in the production of counterfeit cigarettes have little or no quality control; the counterfeit cigarettes, in turn, have alarmingly high levels of contaminants, including dangerous levels of toxic metals. In short, counterfeit cigarettes present a serious public health risk.

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