Editor’s Note: With respect to the size, growth, public health threats, and national security threats posed by illicit cigarettes, please see the US Department of State report (in conjunction with the Departments of Justice, Treasury, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services) The global Illicit Trade in Tobacco: A threat to national security.
From: The Conversation
Big Tobacco is consistently overstating black market in cigarettes – new findings
What’s the size of the black market in tobacco and who is behind it? These questions have dogged governments, public health advocates, researchers and the tobacco industry for years. The world’s biggest tobacco companies spend millions on research to produce answers – commissioning reports which often conclude that the trade in illicit tobacco is on the rise.
The big tobacco companies routinely use these findings to argue that every tobacco control policy will lead to increases in smuggling – claiming higher taxes encourage more people to buy cigarettes illegally, for example, or that plain packaging makes it easier for counterfeiters to copy big brands.
