Threat to small traders from black-market cigarettes

Conor Pope

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Because the cigarettes sold from suitcases are contraband, his rivals can undercut him by as much as 70 per cent – so the impact their illicit trade has on his legitimate business is “absolutely huge”.

He has been in retail for more than three decades and has watched with dismay in recent years as the popularity of the black-market hawkers in Dublin has grown. He is convinced they have been facilitated by impediments placed in his way by a State understandably anxious to make smoking less attractive through punitive pricing.