Cigarettes are the world’s most widely smuggled legal consumer product. In 2006, contraband cigarettes accounted for 11 percent of global cigarette sales, or about 600 billion cigarettes. For years, the tobacco industry claimed that high cigarette taxes encouraged smuggling from low tax jurisdictions. However, documents uncovered during recent lawsuits confirm that the tobacco industry itself is responsible or involved in many large-scale cigarette smuggling operations worldwide.

Cigarette smuggling undermines public health efforts to reduce tobacco use by making international brands more affordable to low-income consumers and to youth, thus stimulating consumption. In addition, illicit products often fail to comply with health warning requirements and often violate youth access laws due to informal and underground distribution networks. Illicit trade also deprives governments of billions of dollars in annual tax revenue needed for tobacco control and to treat tobacco-related diseases. Illicit trade deprives governments of US$40–50 billion in tax revenue each year. This revenue is siphoned by organized crime networks and the tobacco companies themselves, assisting in greater sales volume and higher profit margins. Tobacco companies also smuggle cigarettes to launch new brands, enter new markets, and fight price wars with competitors.

Article 15 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control addresses the illicit trade problem and is the basis for a new international protocol to control cigarette smuggling formulated by the parties to the Convention.

In 2008, Canada’s two largest tobacco companies paid US$1.12 billion in fines and penalties for smuggling cigarettes, the largest fines ever levied in Canada.

Recommendations to control cigarete smuggling, Framework Convention Alliance, 2007

• Track and trace tobacco products to identify points of diversion to illicit markets
• Require that cigarette manufacturers control their distribution chain, with serious penalties and tax liabilities for failure to do so
• License and monitor tobacco product supply and distribution chain personnel
• Enhance law enforcement and international cooperation to investigate and prosecute illicit trade promotion

Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies
Protect people from tobacco smoke
Offer help to quit tobacco use
Warn about the dangers of tobacco
Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
Raise taxes on tobacco

Building on the first-ever global public health treaty - the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) - the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2008 issued a comprehensive country-level report on the global tobacco epidemic. This report provides data from 179 countries covering 99% of the world’s population and sets baselines for implementation and enforcement of the six evidence-based and cost-effective policies of the WHO MPOWER strategy. Currently only 5% of the world’s population is fully protected by any one of the MPOWER interventions and no country implements and enforces all of them. By taking action to implement MPOWER, the leaders of governments and civil society can create the necessary environment to protect children from tobacco, help people quit tobacco use and save millions of lives a year.

The final version of the online Tobacco Atlas will have information on MPOWER steps related to the issues portrayed on each map.