COUNTERFEIT CIGARETTES
Brazil is flooded with counterfeit cigarettes. Tobacco companies lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to smuggled or fake cigarettes.
These illegal cigarettes now represent 34 percent of the volume of cigarettes sold per year, jumping from 5 percent of the market in 1991 and 20 percent in 1995.
Approximately 51 billion cigarettes are sold illegally every year in the Brazilian market out of a total of 150 billion cigarettes sold per year, mainly originating in Paraguay.
Economic Impact
Brazil would net $500 million a year in lost cigarette tax revenue if counterfeiting were eliminated. The billions of counterfeit tobacco products available in Brazil are also beyond the reach of Brazil’s National Agency of Health Control. Thus, these products are outside the health agency’s scope, posing additional risks to Brazilian Consumers.
See article
http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/BASCAP/Pages/Counterfeiting_and_Piracy_in_Brazil%5B1%5D.pdf
