Illicit tobacco funding gangs and increasing use

ILLEGAL tobacco is booming across Australia, funding international criminal gangs, and costing taxpayers more than $1 billion each year. And the introduction of plain packaging for legal cigarettes has failed, according to a report released this morning. That report states that ­tobacco consumption in Australia will rise this year for the first time since 2003. Demand for cheap counterfeit and contraband cigarettes is accelerating, driven by excise increases on legitimate tobacco. And shops dispensing ­illegal tobacco do so with ­apparent impunity, despite a fine of up to $340,000 for selling a single packet. The Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, passed in 2011, made Australia the first country to remove all logos, colour and design from cigarette packets. But a report compiled by the international auditing firm, KPMG, and released exclusively to the Herald Sun, shows that while sales of legal cigarettes and tobacco have slipped slightly in the past 12 months, surging demand for counterfeit and contraband cigarettes and chop chop tobacco has more than made up that shortfall. The KPMG report was commissioned by big players in the legal tobacco industry. It involved analysing consumers’ preferences and ­collecting 12,000 discarded cigarette packets. Three years ago, then prime minister Kevin Rudd announced a 25 per cent increase in tax on cigarettes along with the plain packaging plan, the government convinced the changes would slash tobacco consumption by 6 per cent.

 

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/illicit-tobacco-funding-gangs-and-increasing-use/story-fnii5smt-1226752355906