Ariel’s friend who immigrated to the UK recently reported that the problem of fake cigarettes in the UK is serious, and he sighed that “immigrated to the UK to eat shit cigarettes”.
Ariel asked what happened, and a friend quoted the British “Daily Star” report on July 4, saying that it was the reason. According to the “Daily Star”, British smokers are facing a “life crisis” at the moment when prices are soaring in the UK, and cheap fake or smuggled cigarettes are flooding the market.
According to a recent report released by the international tobacco giant Philip Morris, nearly 20% of cigarettes in the UK market are smuggled or fake, and in some areas, the proportion is even close to 33%. Last year, sales of counterfeit cigarettes in the UK surged by 30%, surpassing 3 billion for the first time. Former police officer O’Reilly, who worked as a consultant for tobacco companies, revealed that shipping a container of smuggled or counterfeit cigarettes to the UK could make about £1.5 million, which also made many criminal gangs happy.
Previously, the main source of counterfeit cigarettes in the UK market was Belarus. After the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the production of counterfeit cigarettes in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg began to increase. O’Reilly pointed out that various impurities were frequently detected in fake cigarettes, including mites, fungi, hair, etc., and some fake cigarettes were even detected to contain fecal components.
Immigrant friends say, I don’t understand why fake cigarettes contain feces, but it’s amazing that cigarettes have changed into feces. He will not buy cheap illicit cigarettes, but the proportion of fake cigarettes in some areas is as high as 33%.
According to the 2019 survey data, the smoking rate of adults over the age of 18 in the UK reached 14.1%, of which the smoking rate of adult males was 15.9%, and the smoking rate of adult females was 12.5%.