Government warns of hazardous fake cigarettes

Customs Minister John Healey has launched a campaign warning smokers tempted to buy cheap smuggled cigarettes that increasing numbers of hazardous fake cigarettes are being sold on streets, in pubs and in markets around the UK.

According to research published today, more than half the cigarettes currently being seized - more than a million each day - are counterfeit, and 85% of the cigarettes being sold in London are fakes.

Many of the counterfeit cigarettes are manufactured in underground factories overseas using contaminated tobacco leaves, substantially increasing the health risks associated with smoking, with much higher levels of tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, lead, cadmium and arsenic than genuine brand-name cigarettes.

Mr Healey said: "Over the past four years, we've seized nine billion cigarettes and destroyed more than 250 organised smuggling gangs. If we hadn't taken this action, more than one in three of the cigarettes being smoked in the UK today would have been smuggled. Instead, the smuggled share of the cigarette market stands at just 15 per cent."

However, the Minister warned that as supply lines have been disrupted, international smuggling gangs unable to obtain genuine cigarettes are beginning to manufacture their own counterfeit versions of brand-name cigarettes.

"So if you are tempted to buy cheap smuggled cigarettes on the street or in the pub - what you're doing is not only funding organized crime, it can also be even more dangerous for your health than real cigarettes," he said.

The Minister warned that it was nearly impossible to tell from the packaging whether the cigarettes were fakes as the packets had both health warnings and a tax stamp.

Pledging to crack down on this illegal market and the organized criminals who were running it, the Minister appealed to the public to "turn their backs on the gangs who smuggle and sell these fake cigarettes".

Anyone with information should contact the confidential Customs hotline on 0800 59 5000.

An investigation of counterfeit cigarette samples in the UK has revealed "substantial" levels of hazardous contaminants, including carcinogenic heavy metals such as cadmium and arsenic.

(SP)