Waqas Qureshi May 29, 2014  extracted from packagingnews

The Australian government has rebuffed claims by tobacco manufacturers that the introduction of plain-packaging laws has sparked an increase in smuggling

With Australia set to defend its plain packaging laws against a World Trade Organisation challenge, tobacco manufacturers claim trafficking in Australia is reaching record highs.

The Australian newspaper said representatives for Tobacco manufacturers from KPMG recently told a conference a KPMG report showed a huge rise in manufactured illegal cigarettes entering the market.

But the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service responded by disclosing it has seized only one illegal shipment of plain packs, involving 10 million cigarettes from China, and rejected claims the laws led to an increase in smuggling.

“The move to plain packaging does not appear to have had a significant impact on illicit tobacco imports,” an Australian customs spokesman said.

During the first nine months of 2013-14, there were 66 detections of smuggled tobacco products in sea cargo, it added.

Dr. Crawford Moodie, a senior research fellow from the Centre for Tobacco Control Research at the University of Stirling who has worked on plain packaging for a number of years, told Packaging News that with respect to the size of the illicit market, research conducted on behalf of tobacco companies and official government figures are often incongruous.

“While some differences are to be expected, the figures are typically higher for tobacco company funded work, and invariably used to petition governments from adopting particular tobacco control measures – as is apparent in the UK and Ireland. After shouting for two decades that plain packaging would, without question, lead to an increase in counterfeit tobacco, tobacco companies seem rather quiet about the fact that it seems to have done the exact opposite.”