102 Clifton Street,London EC2A 4HW Tel: (0207) 739 5902 Fax: (0207) 613 0531

MPs told 75% of cigarette smuggling is due to organised gangs and large scale fraud

Tuesday night - MPs were told that, according to latest figures from HM Customs and Excise, three quarters of cigarette smuggling is now undertaken by criminal gangs and involves freight consignments of millions of cigarettes. This is three times the scale of the 'White Van' bootlegging trade. At a meeting of the All-Party Group on Smoking and Health, health campaigners argued that large-scale smuggling can only be tackled by a crackdown on fraud.

Clive Bates, Director of ASH, told MPs: "Cigarette smuggling isn't down to a few sleazy small-time operators taking white transit vans over the Channel to Belgium, but serious gangsters who have moved from narcotics into tobacco because the risks are lower. Most cigarette smuggling is going on in freight containers of millions of cigarettes via elaborate diversion frauds."

Professor Gordon McVie,Director General of The Cancer Research Campaign commented: "The evidenceshows that we have one of the most successful Quitlines in the world and anyone thinkingabout stopping smoking should use it."

The tobacco companies' campaign to cut cigarette taxes would not tackle smuggling but would damage people's health and the economy. Bates added: "Cuts in tax levels would make little difference to the incentive for smuggling cigarettes by the container-load. It has to be tackled through better detection and prosecution, with much stiffer penalties. Tax cuts will backfire."MPs were shown evidence that high levels of tobacco smuggling also occur in some of the countries with the lowest rates of tobacco duty.

Kevin Barron MP, Chair of the All-Party Group on Smoking and Health, told the meeting: "People think cigarette smuggling is all about cross channel bootlegging, but the reality is totally different. Whole freight containers of cigarettes can be sent to Eastern Europe or the Middle East and return to Britain described as something else. Sometimes the containers never even leave this country, but the paperwork changes and the cigarettes are diverted directly to the criminal distributors."

Professor Joy Townsend, a leading health economist at the University of Hertfordshire, said that high tobacco taxes were sound public policy: "The World Bank estimates that every 10% price increase on cigarettes leads to a 4% decrease in smoking. High tobacco tax is a sound health policy and much better for the economy than raising taxes on jobs or investment."

Speakers called on the Government to adopt a much more sceptical approach to the tobacco companies. "They benefit hugely from cigarette smuggling, why should anyone trust them to be part of the solution when they profit so heavily from the problem?" said Bates

END 

Notes to the editor

1. The International Herald Tribune reported the first prosecutions of tobacco industry executives (from RJ Reynolds) for involvement in smuggling on December 24, 1998. Tobacco companies have supplied wholesalers in Belgium and Andorra. The Gallaher 1997 annual report says: "Gallaher believes the gains [to Gallaher] in Andorra relate to increased bootlegging trade into the UK."

2. Estimated Tobacco smuggling in the UK 1999

Registered Charity No 262067
Action on Smoking and Health is a company limited by guarantee.  Registered inEngland No 998971.  Registered address as above