A Call To Combat Tobacco Smuggling

Editor's Choice
Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Also Included In: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Article Date: 11 Oct 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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The UK government needs to increase its efforts in tackling the tobacco smuggling problem, according to a team of experts who authored an essay published on bmj.com. Tobacco smuggling is responsible for about 4,000 premature deaths every year in the UK - four times the number of deaths that are caused by using all other smuggled illegal drugs combined.

Smuggled tobacco allows cigarettes to sell for about half the price, write Professor Robert West (Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre) and colleagues. The authors are concerned that lower cigarette prices will not discourage people to quit smoking.

About 21% of all tobacco smoked in the UK enters the country by smuggling - product that accounts for a 12% lower price of legal tobacco. If smuggling was stopped and tobacco legal prices rose by 12%, the authors predict that 5 to 8% of smokers would decide to quit. This could save about 4000 lives every year.

West and colleagues also point out how health inequalities would be alleviated if the government did more to reduce tobacco smuggling. Low income people are more likely to smoke illegal tobacco and they are more likely to quit when the price of tobacco rises.

In 2000, the government announced a strategy called "Tackling Tobacco Smuggling" that has led to a reduction in tobacco smuggling. However, the authors want more to be done, with more resources being devoted to this problem.

All the other European Union countries except the UK, for example, have signed on to legally enforceable agreements with Philip Morris International and Japan Tobacco International, two major tobacco companies. These agreements are designed to stop supplying contractors involved in smuggling and to make sure that tobacco distribution is tightly controlled and regulated.

Finally, the authors call for clear targets for reducing smuggling into the UK, where HM Revenue and Customs and the new UK Border Agency are held publicly accountable for performance.

"There is a real risk that once the Borders Agency takes over responsibility for cross border control, with its main focus on immigration, tobacco smuggling will cease to be treated as the priority it needs to be," they conclude.

Why combating tobacco smuggling is a priority
Robert West, Joy Townsend, Luk Joossens, Deborah Arnott, Sarah Lewis
BMJ (2008). 337:a1933
doi:10.1136/bmj.a1933
Click Here to View Journal Web Site

Written by: Peter M Crosta
Copyright: Medical News Today
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