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Apr 23, 2024 · According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), some 12.9% of people aged 18 years and over in the UK - or about 6.4 million people - smoked cigarettes in 2022.
- Ministerial foreword
- Introduction
- Progress update
- Recent trends
- A new approach
Smoking is a leading cause of preventable death and illness in the UK. This government is united in our action to address the harms of tobacco and make smoking obsolete. In 2019 we pledged to make England ‘smokefree’ by 2030 – achieved when adult smoking prevalence falls to 5% or less.
In October 2023 we went even further with Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation, announcing a range of measures to tackle the harms of smoking. This includes our intention to introduce legislation which means anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be legally sold tobacco products.
With every step we take towards a smokefree generation we must continue our efforts to tackle the criminals seeking to undermine our progress. HMRC estimates that the illicit market in tobacco duty and related VAT was £2.8 billion in 2021 to 2022. The proceeds of this crime fund the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and even human beings across the globe. We must tackle the cancer of organised criminal groups as unwaveringly as we tackle the harms of smoking itself.
HMRC launched its first strategy to tackle illicit tobacco in 2000. This, and consequent strategies with Border Force, have reduced the estimated duty gap for cigarettes by a third (from 16.9% in 2005 to 11% in 2021 to 2022) and for hand-rolling tobacco by a half (from 65.2% to 33.5% over the same period). Our last strategy published in 2015 drove forward bold new legislation, sanctions, controls and operations to tackle the illicit trade.
Today we go even further. Our new strategy will target loopholes at all stages of the supply chain, keeping us several steps ahead of the criminals.
The strategy:
“Illicit tobacco preys on the most disadvantaged in our community, stealing health and hope” – Javed Khan, Independent Review into Making Smoking Obsolete, June 2022
Tobacco harms our health, our productivity, and our economy. Its harms are well-documented and widespread. In 2019 the government committed to making England smokefree by 2030 – achieved when adult smoking prevalence falls to 5% or less. To support this ambition, in October 2023 the government set out its intention to create a ‘smokefree generation’. This means anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never be legally sold tobacco products.
To deter people from smoking, we have also developed one of the highest tobacco taxation regimes in the world. These high duty rates, making tobacco less affordable, have helped reduce smoking prevalence in the UK from 26% in 2000 to 12.9% in 2022.
Illicit tobacco, however, undermines these efforts. The illicit trade involves a range of tobacco products that are sold illegally, often to underaged users, without paying taxes (VAT and excise duty). It provides a cheap and unregulated supply of tobacco to those who might otherwise be deterred by cost.
Illicit tobacco trade undercuts law-abiding businesses. It funds other organised crime with its proceeds and increases the burden on honest taxpayers. HMRC estimated the illicit market in tobacco duty and related VAT at £2.8 billion in 2021 to 2022. Its impacts are disproportionately felt by the most disadvantaged in our communities, with over half of all smokers of illicit tobacco coming from the most deprived socioeconomic groups.
Tobacco fraud exists throughout the world and the UK market represents a small fraction of the global demand for illicit product. The wide range of suppliers and organised crime groups (OCGs) operating across borders make it hard to limit the flow of goods into the UK; there is a virtually limitless illicit supply available worldwide and the profit margins attract large numbers of criminals. We know this and respond accordingly, working in partnership across government to stop production at source, seize illicit product at our borders and in our shops, and punish the criminals involved in the illicit tobacco trade.
The government has pledged to take action on the sale of illicit tobacco in successive strategies dating back to 2000. HMRC and Border Force’s last strategy, ‘Tackling illicit tobacco: From leaf to light’ (‘Leaf to Light’) launched in 2015, set out the following aims for targeting, catching, and punishing those involved in the illicit tobacco market:
1.create a hostile global environment for tobacco fraud through intelligence sharing and policy change
2.tackle the fraud at all points in the supply chain, from illicit production to retail
3.raise public awareness of the links between illicit tobacco and organised criminality to reduce tolerance of the fraud in the UK
4.optimise the use of the sanctions we have and, where we need to, develop tougher ones
As well as improving the way we operate, we have also continued to use the full range of sanctions available to tackle fraud throughout the supply chain. From April 2015 to March 2023, this has resulted in:
The wider backdrop of HMRC’s work to tackle illicit tobacco has evolved since the publication of ‘Leaf to Light’:
•smoking prevalence in the UK has reduced significantly from 17.2% in 2015 to 12.9% in 2022 (around 6.4 million people). Government action has been an important driver of this decline and will soon go further. In October 2023, the Department of Health and Social Care published its command paper, Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation. This will make it an offence for anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 to be sold tobacco products. History shows that when we have introduced targeted measures, whether through tighter legal controls or stronger enforcement, they have had a positive impact on tackling the problems of illicit tobacco. This strategy, and the increased investment in enforcement agencies of over £100 million over 5 years, will further boost agencies such as local trading standards, HMRC and Border Force to stamp out opportunities for criminals
•despite tighter controls and successes since ‘Leaf to Light’, HMRC’s tax gap estimates and wider intelligence suggests the tobacco duty gap has broadly stagnated since 2015 (15.6% in 2015 to 2016 to 17.7% in 2021 to 2022). This stagnation suggests that no matter how much we strengthen our current strategy, supply will always find a way to enter the market where a demand for it exists. The profit margins available in the global illicit tobacco trade mean OCGs will go to great lengths to maintain supply, are willing to constantly adapt to tight controls, and are able to quickly recover from setbacks
•far-reaching developments such as the UK’s exit from the EU, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost-of-living pressures do not seem to have impacted the overall risk posed by illicit tobacco. The demand in illicit tobacco appears to have remained consistent in spite of these political and global events
•there have been some changes to the type of product that make up the illicit market:
•the illicit market for cigarettes is currently dominated by counterfeit and cheap white cigarettes, which are virtually all manufactured outside the UK and smuggled in as finished product. Smuggled genuine cigarettes make up a smaller part of the market
Aim 1: Reduce demand for illicit tobacco
To reduce the size of the illicit market, we have to reduce demand for illicit products. Supply side measures alone are not enough to make further progress in the fight against illicit tobacco. Reducing demand will reduce the opportunities for OCGs and the wider harm they cause, reduce tax losses and support the government’s new plan to create a ‘smokefree generation’.
Aim 2: Tackle organised crime to reduce community harm
The illicit tobacco market is dominated by organised crime, that brings pain and suffering to the UK and our local communities. We will not allow these OCGs to operate freely. We will bring them to justice and protect society from the harms they cause. Significant new investment of over £100 million across the next 5 years has been allocated to proactively tackle the persistent challenge of the tax gap plateau and effectively address the emerging risks hindering the realisation of a smokefree generation. These 2 overarching aims are strongly interlinked. Our efforts to reduce demand through supply side intervention will involve tackling and punishing the criminals involved in tobacco smuggling. Tackling those criminals will in turn drive up the price of illicit tobacco and have a knock-on impact on quantity demanded. Substantial new funding of over £100 million throughout the next 5 years has been allocated to support the delivery of the first smokefree generation, demonstrating our commitment to combatting tobacco fraud and ensuring a smokefree generation for our society. This new money will be used to support the full range of activity across HMRC, Border Force and Trading Standards as set out in this strategy. We have worked to incorporate recommendations on illicit tobacco from The Khan review 2022: Making Smoking Obsolete into this strategy where relevant. Specific actions on shisha and tougher sanctions for illicit tobacco are set out in detail below. Several of these recommendations, such as the introduction of a tobacco licensing scheme, are broadly covered by existing or upcoming schemes, such as Tobacco Track and Trace requirements and accompanying sanctions. The government has set out proposed actions to protect future generations from the harms of smoking by creating the first smokefree generation. HMRC and Border Force will work to support wider government ambition around reducing demand for tobacco more generally. Our particular role will be to reduce demand for illicit tobacco. We will work to reduce demand directly by tackling public attitudes towards illicit tobacco consumption as well as by reducing the ease of access to illicit products. Our ambition is to drive down demand for illicit tobacco by making it more expensive to buy and harder to source.
Aim 1: Reduce demand for illicit tobacco
1A: Reduce the ease of purchasing illicit tobacco by increasing our impact on retailers that sell illicit products and working with honest law abiding retailers We want to prevent illicit tobacco from being a convenient and readily available option. We will work to disrupt the ease of access in order to achieve a knock-on impact on demand. We will: build on the success of Operation CeCe by increasing the level of funding and committing to our relationship with Trading Standards for the long term, to enable greater impact improve intelligence sharing across HMRC and Trading Standards, ensuring the long-term success of Operation CeCe tackle online sales of illicit tobacco on social media platforms, gathering intelligence on social media sales, and working with social media platforms to ensure we are effective in limiting criminal groups’ ability to sell illicit tobacco through these channels review our current sanctions to ensure we are able to work with landlords to close down any outlets that sell illicit tobacco on their premises and encourage them to terminate leases early where this is the case. This will support the enforcement of our new tougher tobacco sanctions 1B: Focusing our law enforcement activity on increasing the price at which organised crime groups are able to sell illicit tobacco products, which will in turn reduce demand for them While limiting supply of illicit products is extremely difficult due to their availability around the world and the willingness of OCGs to smuggle them, our actions change the way the OCGs operate, increasing their costs and raising the eventual street price of the tobacco products. Economic analysis shows that raising the price of illicit tobacco products has a material impact on the demand for those products. We will: increase the risk to those criminals involved in the supply of illicit tobacco, forcing OCGs to go to greater, more expensive lengths, to smuggle products disrupt smuggling routes and methods, making OCGs adapt to more expensive routes and methods to maintain supply dismantle the most prolific OCGs in order to eliminate the economies of scale they are able to achieve continue to dismantle illicit tobacco factories in the UK, disrupting attempts by OCGs to establish UK production as a means to eliminate logistical costs 1C: Support the wider government campaign for a ‘smokefree generation’ strategy with communication activity to help tackle the trade and consumption of illicit tobacco and raise awareness of links to organised crime. Whilst we have publicised our prosecutions and seizures and fed into wider governmental campaigns to tackle illicit tobacco, we can go further to raise awareness of illicit tobacco and the impact it has on local communities, using communication levers to help drive down demand for illicit product. We will: deliver proactive communications activity to support the drive to reduce demand and comfort levels for users of illicit tobacco publish communications targeted at businesses – including retail outlets – to reinforce the risk and highlight the impact of new sanctions issue wider communications, which will highlight the wider community harm, risks to children and links to other types of organised crime where appropriate. The impact of the illicit trade is often the greatest in the most deprived areas of the country. Focusing communications to areas where illicit tobacco is most prevalent will help support a smokefree generation and reduce health disparities work with other government departments, including the Department of Health and Social Care, to support communication campaigns and other initiatives designed to reduce demand for tobacco products more generally – highlighting the financial impact to the economy as a whole and to local communities ensure we are joined up on our messaging with other government departments, public bodies, and organisations including the Illicit Tobacco Partnership continue to proactively publicise our seizures, arrests, and success stories
Mar 20, 2024 · Consumption of illegal tobacco has gone from 17 billion cigarettes in 2000 to 2001 to 3 billion cigarettes in 2022 to 2023. When the age of sale was increased from 16 to 18 in 2007, the number of ...
Mar 6, 2024 · Office for National Statistics showed that in the UK, in 2022, 12.9 per cent of adults smoked cigarettes; 14.6 per cent of men and 11.2 per cent of women, which equates to around 6.4 million ...
- The case for change. Overview. This chapter sets out the case for taking further action to finish the job on preventing people becoming addicted to smoking, while also addressing the more recent challenge of youth vaping.
- Action already underway. Overview. A comprehensive approach to tobacco control has been critical to the success in reducing smoking rates including a history of legislation, funding to local stop smoking services, NHS tobacco dependence treatment services and impactful anti-smoking campaigns.
- Smoking - stopping the start. Overview. There is no more addictive product that is legally sold in our shops than tobacco, which is why ‘stopping the start’ of addiction is vital.
- Supporting people to quit smoking. Overview. Quitting smoking is the best thing a smoker can do for their health. It has been estimated that someone who quits before turning 30 could add 10 years to their life.
Nov 29, 2023 · The UK government receives £10 billion annually from tobacco duty, which risks being lost to criminal gangs under prohibitionist plans. HMRC estimates that one in nine manufactured cigarettes and one in three hand-rolled cigarettes were bought illegally in 2021–22; a further 4 per cent were bought abroad, costing £2.2 billion in lost ...
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Oct 13, 2023 · Bold proposals will prohibit sale of cigarettes to anyone born in or after 2009 On 4 October 2023 the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced his intention to introduce legislation ensuring that from 1 January 2027, and on the same day every year thereafter, the minimum age of sale for tobacco would rise by one year. If enacted, people aged 14 and under today will never be able legally to ...
