Illicit Trade Costing Dear

Source from:  tobaccoreporter.com Thailand, Thursday, July 5, 2007 07/10/2007

Tens of billions of illicit cigarettes are counterfeited, smuggled or both each year, according to Julie Payne reporting for Associated Press on the World Health Organization's Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Illicit cigarette sales, at about 600 billion pieces, last year accounted for 10.7 per cent of total global tobacco sales, according to the Framework Convention Alliance, an international alliance of hundreds of anti-smoking groups. Governments lost more than $40 billion each year in unpaid taxes because of the illegal tobacco trade, a sum that exceeded the gross domestic product of two-thirds of the world's countries, the alliance said. Payne quoted Luk Joossens, senior policy adviser for the alliance, as saying that because smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes were sold at lower prices than were legal products, they contributed to higher consumption and greater rates of smoking-related illness and death. Enditem