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ANALYSIS: Robert West, Joy Townsend, Luk Joossens, Deborah Arnott, and Sarah Lewis Why combating tobacco smuggling is a priority BMJ 2008; 337: a1933 [Full text]

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The Government encourages tobacco smuggling.

Alexander S D Spiers   (9 November 2008)

The Government encourages tobacco smuggling. 9 November 2008
Alexander S D Spiers, Professor of Medicine (retired). N/A. Send response to journal: Re: The Government encourages tobacco smuggling.	Robert West and his colleagues are rightly concerned about the contribution made by smuggled tobacco products to the ill health of the nation. Unfortunately, Government policies tend to promote this illicit trade. For many years the Government has progressively increased the tax on cigarettes and other forms of tobacco with the aims of prompting smokers to give up the habit, or else to drastically reduce their intake of cigarettes. These aims are worthy but it is uncertain how often or how permanently they are achieved. When the tax on cigarettes increases,there is a decrease in cigarette sales, but the effect is probably transient as smokers adapt to the higher prices. High taxes provide large amounts of revenue which might for example be used to increase funding for the NHS. There is an unfortunate conflict of interest, because successful reduction in tobacco consumption entails a significant decline in revenue which the Treasury does not appreciate. High taxes on tobacco encourage smuggling because they boost the sales of smuggled cigarettes and make smuggling a profitable business, while lower taxes could make smuggling not worth the effort. Canada is very vulnerable to cigarette smuggling because it has a very long and relatively porous border with the United States,where taxes on cigarettes are significantly lower. Tobacco smuggling into Canada became so rife that the Canadian tax was reduced to discourage the illicit trade. The WHO proposals to require the tobacco companies to pay the taxes on smuggled cigarettes, thus enlisting the suppliers to police their own product, might be the best long-term solution to the smuggling problem, although the bureaucratic machinery involved will be awesome. Competing interests: None declared