Retail sales of cigarettes in the UK have been falling since the early 1970s when more than 137bn were sold to the trade by manufacturers. By 2001, retail sales had dropped to 55.5bn, but this figure does not equate to the number of cigarettes smoked. Increasingly, the high duty imposed on cigarettes has led smokers to source their cigarettes abroad. Some buy cigarettes in neighbouring EU states as part of legal transactions, while others consume smuggled cigarettes. The emergence of this cross-border trade was easy enough to predict because the retail price in the UK's most popular cigarette price category is ￡4.51 a pack, compared with ￡3.24 a pack in the next most expensive EU country, Ireland. More significantly, the UK price is more than double the prices paid in Germany, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Luxembourg and Spain. The Tobacco Manufacturers' Association (TMA) estimates that in 2001 the UK consumed 23.5bn cigarettes on which UK duty had not been paid, which amounts to 3.0% of the cigarettes smoked in the country.
展开▼
