THE SMOKE SMUGGLERS:Cigarette counterfeiting is now so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a real packet and a fake version at a cursory glance.
Both packets bear the same colouring and livery, both carry the required health warnings in English and Irish, and both carry what looks like a genuine tax stamp from the Revenue Commissioners.
However, one packet sees more than €6.70 contributed to the exchequer when it is purchased, while the other gives nothing to the exchequer and puts handsome profits in the hands of criminal gangs and their network of dealers.
The experienced eye can detect small differences between regular packets of John Player Blue and the counterfeit packet I picked up for a little over half price in a Co Kildare market.
The paper used for the tax stamp is that bit thinner in the counterfeit version, and more poorly glued to the packet, than in the real thing. A watermark, in the shape of an Irish harp, is absent, but is hard to spot on the genuine tax stamp anyway.
The tax stamp bears three numbers, one indicating the manufacturer, another the batch and the third the packet. In my counterfeit packet of 200, however, the same number is used for all packets, when they should be sequentially numbered.
It used to be the case that smugglers focused only on international brands, but in the past two years the Irish market has been flooded with counterfeit versions of popular domestic brands, such as JPS. This change has shocked the home industry into action, and the Revenue has changed its tax stamp in an effort to outwit the smugglers.
But what about the taste of these counterfeit cigarettes, which probably originated in China? Most of the smokers I blind-tested the fake cigarettes on were unable to tell them from real ones, and some even expressed a preference for the cigarette that turned out to be black-market.
