The scent of tobacco still wafts through Britain’s streets. It’s not just a whiff of rebellion against the nanny state – it’s a crime wave. High taxes and stringent regulations have driven smokers away from legitimate retailers and into the arms of organised criminal gangs, importing bags of ‘baccy’ from warehouses from as far afield as Bulgaria. For the British people, who value safe communities and the liberty to enjoy life’s small vices without funding gangsters, this should sound alarm bells. It’s time to rethink our approach: cutting tobacco taxes and easing regulations on vapes would curb the black market, paradoxically protect public health and restore personal freedoms.
The numbers tell a stark story. Legal tobacco sales are plummeting – receipts on duties dropped 12% to £8.8 million, according to the latest Tobacco Bulletin, while smoking prevalence hovers stubbornly around 14% of the working-age population. Meanwhile, a pack of cigarettes costs £16.48 legally, but can be snapped up for as little as £3.50 on the black market. This gaping price gap has been fuelled by taxes rising 2% above inflation annually. Where are these missing smokers buying their tobacco? Not from responsible business owners, that’s for sure.
This shift isn’t just an economic quirk – it’s a law-and-order disaster. The unregulated black market is a cash cow for organised crime, who smuggle tobacco through our porous borders and pocket the profits. These aren’t petty thieves; they’re gangs smuggling drugs, weapons and even people, all bankrolled by cut-price cigarettes. Research even indicates that tobacco smuggling makes up a proportion of terrorist financing. For those already concerned by rising crime, this is a direct threat to our safety and civility. Every illicit pack sold in a suburban car park or through a dodgy online ad – often via social media and small parcel deliveries – emboldens these networks.
Health, too, hangs in the balance. Black market tobacco isn’t just cheap; it’s dangerously unregulated. Experts warn these ‘chop chop cigarettes’ may pack higher toxin levels than their legal counterparts. For those of us who wince at lengthening hospital queues, the irony is bitter: punitive taxes meant to deter smoking might instead be clogging wards with sicker patients.
So why not cut taxes? The logic is simple yet compelling. Make legal cigarettes affordable – say, £8 to £10 a pack – and the black market’s allure fades. Smokers, many of whom are ordinary folk who’d rather not consort with criminals, could return to regulated shops. As a former smoker, this price is still well above what I pay for my heated tobacco and nicotine pouches. Tax revenue might even rise as sales shift back to the legal ledger, yet another notch for the Laffer curve’s wisdom that over-taxation breeds evasion. Yes, the public health lobbyists will cry foul, arguing that high prices curb smoking. But when the smoking rate barely dips and illicit trade soars, that argument feels more driven by dogma than data.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill embodies this mindset – a generational smoking ban that has ignored the failed international precedents and the growing black-market tobacco problem, but also restricted the advertising of safer vaping, which we know helps smokers to kick cigarettes. Irresponsible public health lobbyists have led the public down the wrong path – most people incorrectly believe that vaping is worse for you than smoking, a belief fed by the World Health Organisation’s scare-stories and people consuming illegal products. Vaping is 95% safer than smoking, so much so that the NHS’s flagship anti-smoking scheme prescribes vapes to smokers.
Policymakers must act. The black market isn’t a niche problem; it’s a metastasising threat to our health and security. Let’s stub it out – not with more rules, but with a bold cut to taxes and a return to common sense. For the sake of our communities and our consciences, it’s a chance worth taking.
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