A growing global trade in black market cigarettes is killing tens of thousands of people a year, causing massive health problems and costing governments billions of pounds, a hard-hitting report warns today.
A staggering 657 billion cigarettes a year are sold illicitly by organised crime gangs, half of all tobacco sold in some countries is contraband, and £24.6bn in taxes are never paid, it says.
The report makes plain that, contrary to the tobacco industry's claims, cigarette smuggling is much more common and damaging in poorer countries. Inefficient law enforcement, lax border controls and corruption among police and government officials mean smugglers find it easier to move large consignments of stolen or counterfeit cigarettes into countries in the developing world.
More than five million people a year die worldwide from tobacco use, and about 80% of all smokers live in developing countries. The World Health Organisation classifies tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death.
In countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico and Egypt, very poor households spend up to 15% of their incomes on tobacco products, according to the WHO. That exacerbates social and health inequalities and can push families even deeper into poverty, because they are more likely to develop smoking-related illnesses and die than wealthier compatriots.
About 1.2 million of the five million tobacco-related deaths annually are in south-east Asia, where almost half the world's poor live. Some of them spend more on tobacco than on food, shelter, healthcare and education.
The report comes as representatives of governments gather in Geneva to negotiate the first worldwide protocol on illicit trade in tobacco products. Heavily backed by many EU countries, the treaty is expected to lead to co-ordinated global action to try to tackle the problem. Some African administrations are sceptical because they believe it will cost them money to implement, but campaigners say that they will actually make money by ultimately being able to increase the tax on legally sold cigarettes once the black market has been tackled.
The study, part-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been written by Martin Raw of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies at Nottingham University, David Merriman of Illinois University in Chicago, Hana Ross of the American Cancer Society and Luk Joossens of the Brussels-based Framework Convention Alliance pro-treaty organisation. It is called "How eliminating the global illict cigarette trade would increase tax revenue and save lives".
"The burden of illicit trade falls mainly on lower-income countries", the study found. While the black market accounts for 11.6% of all cigarettes consumed worldwide, its market share is 9.8% in well-off countries but 16.8% on average in poorer ones. In Georgia 50% of all cigarettes sold are contraband, while 40% of those in Uzbekistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Bolivia share that source. The figure stands at more than 20% in 15 other, mainly poor, countries. Buyers are tempted by low prices, which prompt them to buy more and smoke more often, leading to illness, says the study.
Eradication of the illicit trade could save 132,000 lives annually in middle-income and poor families, the authors estimate.
Anna Gilmore, an expert in the tobacco industry's global tactics at both Bath University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said China, India and Indonesia were the three countries cigarette firms were most keen to exploit. "They have big populations, are experiencing rapid population growth and contain a lot of women, whom tobacco transnationals see as an untapped market," she said.
