From: This is Nottingham
A£71,000 campaign to target illegal counterfeit cigarettes is to be launched in the city.
Nottingham Trading Standards have been awarded the funding from the Department Of Health to tackle “fag houses” which sell fake branded cigarettes to children aged 12 or younger on city estates.
The campaign will also encourage people to come forward anonymously to identify sellers and distributors.
A bus and poster campaign costing £36,000 will be launched as part of the campaign to highlight ways people can pass on information.
Councillor Alex Norris, portfolio holder for area working, cleansing and community safety for Nottingham City Council, said illicit tobacco was an issue the council took extremely seriously because of how often children were targeted by sellers.
“We ran a similar campaign to this in 2010/11 which was successful because people came forward to tell us – anonymously through Crimestoppers – about neighbours and shops selling illegal tobacco,” he said. “Before that, we knew it was a problem but we weren’t getting any information from the public about it.
“I’m hopeful that using this Department of Health money for a similar campaign will bring forward even more information so we can make further inroads into tackling the problem.
“The sale of illegal cigarettes is dangerous and often targets children, so it’s something we take very seriously.”
The illegally-imported cigarettes are either fakes that are made to look like major brands or are intended for sale abroad only. Their sales costs the economy millions of pounds a year.
The new campaign to tackle illicit tobacco is part of ongoing work to reduce smoking in the city.
The latest figures show that the smoking rate in the city in 2011 was 27.5 per cent.
This is down 4.5 per cent from the previous year.
Nottingham City Council want to reduce the figure even further to 20 per cent by 2020.
The new version of the campaign will be launched later this year.
Trading Standards will also continue to take enforcement action against shops selling the illegal products by seizing products and taking shop owners to court.
Just last month a Notts man was jailed for his part in one of the country’s biggest counterfeit cigarette plots.
Philip Robinson, 46, of Southfields Close, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, was in a gang which set up an illegal cigarette-making factory in Chesterfield.
If the plot had succeeded it could have cheated the revenue out of £150 million a year.
Anyone with information about counterfeit tobacco products should contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
