ASH are still playing dumb about the illicit tobacco market. It's possible that they're not playing and are, in fact, dumb. The state-funded prohibitionist pressure group has been
having a pop at Japan Tobacco International (JTI) for commissioning a survey which found that 31% of Brits have been offered illicit tobacco.
But how credible are JTI’s figures, and how do they compare with evidence that is independent from the tobacco industry?
A recent survey of smokers in the North East of England, commissioned by Fresh,
found that 32% of smokers in the region had been offered illegal
tobacco, most of them infrequently. Applying this figure to the UK as a
whole would equate to roughly 3% of the total population (around a third of smokers), not 31%. On that basis, JTI's estimate appears to overstate the scale of the problem by 90%.
Can you see the problem with this logic? FRESH did a survey of smokers whereas JTI did a survey of the general population (
"15,228 UK adults aged 19 and over, including 5,444 smokers"). ASH assumes that the smoking rate is only 9% (it is actually higher than that) and then disregards the other 91% of the population, as if only smokers are ever offered illicit tobacco.
This will be news to a friend of mine who was recently telling me that he is offered pouches of tobacco every time he goes into a certain convenience store despite repeatedly telling them that he doesn't smoke.
This is nothing new. In their response
to the latest national illicit tobacco estimates, JTI claimed that 42%
of cigarettes consumed in the UK were illicit. If this is correct it
would be the highest level off illicit cigarette consumption ever
recorded. However, official data
published by HMRC estimates that around 12% of cigarettes smoked in the
UK are illicit, down from 20% in 2000 when the black market was at its
peak...
There are two possibilities. Either, JTI has identified a problem that
every independent data source has somehow missed. Or this is another
case of a tobacco company using dodgy stats or misleading reporting to
cry wolf about the black market.
FRESH is no more an independent data source than JTI. Like ASH, it is a tax-sponging prohibitionist outfit that will not take responsibility for the mess it has helped create. JTI and PMI both carry out empty pack surveys, both of which find that the illicit market share is much higher than HMRC's estimates suggest. HMRC itself admits that it has "low confidence" in its findings. The
Irish government also uses empty pack surveys - the gold standard method of sizing up the black market - and these show that
26% of cigarette packs in Ireland were illegal in 2024 and a further 11% were legal but bought abroad via duty-free/EU. For rolling tobacco, the figures are 36% and 13% respectively. It is hard to see why the UK would be doing much better.
Moreover, ASH don't mention the study published last month, funded by Cancer Research UK, which found that the number of smokers buying tobacco from
the black market doubled from 12.2% to 23.1% between mid-2023 and 2025. Given the illegal nature of this activity, we can assume that these are both underestimates.
Meanwhile in Australia, the birthplace of plain packaging, child-friendly cigarettes are being sold by organised crime to anyone for a relative pittance...
Anti-smoking groups were sanguine about the illicit trade in Australia before the problem became too big (and violent) to ignore. Fool me once, etc.
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