From: Vice
Popping Down to the Shops and Into Australia’s Booming Tobacco Black Market
David Allegretti
Nearly 15 percent of the tobacco consumed in Australia is smuggled in illegally. With cigarette prices on the rise, it’s big business.
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One buyer is 60-year-old Melbourne man “Guido,” a pack-a-day smoker and regular purchaser of illegally imported cigarettes. On the condition of anonymity, he agreed to let me tag along while he did his thing.
As Guido drives me to his vendor of choice, I ask him why he turned to buying black market cigarettes. “Cigarettes were becoming too dear,” he explains. “I have no intention of stopping smoking, so you find the alternative—and you find that alternative very easily,” he adds, as we pull up in front of a string of small residential shops in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.
