'Fake cigarettes' health alert

Counterfeiters repackage fake cigarettes as top brands

Buying cheap counterfeit cigarettes might seem like a bargain but you could be putting your health at even greater risk, a BBC documentary reveals.

If you have ever bought cheap cigarettes from street sellers you probably thought the only person you had cheated was the taxman.

Counterfeit cigarettes had 75% more tar, 28% more nicotine and about 63% more carbon monoxide

Des Campbell, Camden Trading Standards

But the chances are you've been conned into buying low quality cigarettes illegally packaged as top brands.

Even buying your cigarettes from a reputable outlet is no guarantee that you will be getting what you pay for.

BBC Two's Crooked Britain discovered fake cigarettes are also being sold as the genuine article in some shops and pub vending machines.

Inferior product

Des Campbell, Head of Camden Trading Standards had some counterfeit cigarettes bought on the street tested in a laboratory.

UK market

In 2001 the UK cigarette market was worth around 55.5 billion cigarettes

He told the programme: "These counterfeit cigarettes had 75% more tar, 28% more nicotine and about 63% more carbon monoxide.

That's twice the amount of cancer causing agents found in most other cigarettes.

Mr Campbell also revealed that the tests showed the cigarettes were contaminated with sand and other packing material such as bits of plastic.

He said: "There was quite a significant difference between the tobacco that's in these kind of cigarettes and the genuine product.

"You're actually buying a product that is far inferior."

In Britain the Treasury estimates that counterfeit cigarettes accounted for one in five of all cigarettes sold in Britain last year.

That adds up to about three billion cigarettes - at a cost of up to £50m in lost revenue to the taxpayer.

Advertising

In the UK it is estimated that the tobacco industry spends around £57m every year on advertising

Supply chain

Reporter Mike Radford went undercover for the programme to discover how fake cigarettes are making their way into Britain.

He met Ronnie and Baldev Singh, and secretly filmed them boasting about how they had fooled shopkeepers, who thought they were getting a genuine bargain, into buying counterfeit cigarettes.

They explained that they bought cartons of cigarettes for £20, but were selling them on for £35.

They said that they had received no complaints and bragged about the easy money they were making.

Price difference

£44 is the cost of 10 packets of genuine cigarettes

£10 is what you could pay for 10 packets of fake cigarettes

Crooked Britain also uncovered some of the big suppliers of fake cigarettes in Britain.

In north London we met, Fio Mayil, who runs a large business buying and distributing fake cigarettes.

He told the programme he had a queue of customers all over the country waiting for delivery.

And he made no secret about the low quality of counterfeit cigarettes .

He said: "You see they use wood and tobacco mixed and put it into the cigarette. That's what they do with a lot of copies.

"I'm an honest man.... I'll tell you this is what I've got my friend, it's fake, it's this, it's that, whatever.

"It's like dealing drugs, same thing."

Big business

Mick Southgate, Customs Detection Manager at Felixstowe, is on the frontline in the battle to halt the flow of the thousands of counterfeit cigarettes being smuggled into Britain every week.

He told the programme that organised criminals are funding and organising cigarette smuggling on a massive scale.

He said: "We are talking very big business these are not people just bringing a few cigarettes off their holiday.

"These are large organised criminal gangs who are very sophisticated and very well financed."

Crooked Britain: Smoke Rings was broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 14 January 2003.