Plain packs will not make this worse?

East Lancashire a ‘hot spot’ for illegal tobacco

ILLICIT tobacco sales have become an ‘acute problem’ in East Lancashire, according to consumer watchdogs.
Seventeen traders have been prosecuted so far this year and there have been 12 court cases since April.

You think it's bad now, just wait untill we get plain packs.

She said the counterfeit, duty-free and ‘black market’ brands like Jin Lings were often sold at half the price of legitimate cigarettes, providing unfair competition to other traders and cheating the taxman.

That's what you get with excessive taxation. You make fags unaffordable and the black market steps in to help out.

Each pack sold cheated customs out of around £5.83 for a packet of cigarettes and £10.81 for a 50g pouch of tobacco, she said.

That's how much we pay to the government every time we buy a pack of fags or bacci. And a good portion of that is used to buy big sticks to whack us round the head with.

Throw plain packs into the mix, making cigarettes even easier to counterfeit and what will we get? The same problem but much bigger. An obese black market maybe?

More fake fags on the street at even cheaper prices. Will that stop the kiddies smoking? Will it bugger, it will make it even cheaper and easier for them to start. Smoking will be cool again.

Of course there is a huge industry that has a large interest in recruiting the next generation of young smokers. Do you know who they are?

That's right, it's the Tobacco Control Industry.

They need new smokers. If everyone quit, the gravy train would end.