It’s budget day and one thing we can almost certainly expect in Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe’s spending announcements is an increase in the price of cigarettes. This year, the cost of a pack of cigarettes is set to increase by 50 cents, bringing it to almost €19 for a pack of twenty.
And while this price hike may help reduce smoking levels in Irish society, and improve the overall health of the population, it is also driving Ireland’s rapidly growing black market tobacco business.
More than one in four cigarettes smoked in Ireland are now sold through the black market, costing the exchequer around €600 million in lost revenue annually.
And it’s not just the Irish authorities who are keen to end this booming underground activity – Big Tobacco companies are now hiring investigators in Ireland to collect data on how and where this business takes place.
On today’s In The News episode, consumer affairs correspondent Conor Pope discusses the day he recently spent shadowing an investigative team hired by Japan Tobacco International, one of the biggest tobacco companies in the world, to scour Dublin for sellers of illegal tobacco.
Who is selling this tobacco, where is it produced and what do we know about the criminals behind this illegal cigarette chain?
And what is the point of tobacco companies tracking down small-time street dealers who are purely cogs in a much larger, multimillion euro, illicit tobacco-producing machine?
Today, why is Big Tobacco going after illegal cigarette sellers in Ireland?
Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.
