2009-06-29 17:41:53 - International cigarette smuggling is increasingly funding international terrorism, costs governments worldwide over $40 billion each year -- with losses falling disproportionately on low and middle income countries -- and the benefits of eliminating this illicit trade, including an estimated saving of over 150,000 lives a year by raising the price of cigarettes, far exceed the costs.

That's why delegates from nearly 150 countries are meeting in Geneva to craft a coordinated plan for attacking cigarette smuggling under an international antismoking treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [FCTC], announces public interest law professor John Banzhaf, Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), America's first antismoking organization which is helping to coordinate these efforts.

“The case for coordinated worldwide action against tobacco smuggling and other forms of illicit trade in tobacco has never been stronger,” said Laurent Huber, director of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA), a global alliance of more than 350 non-government organizations working on the global tobacco treaty. Huber is also International Director of ASH.

“There is no denying that government delegates arriving in Geneva

today are faced with a week of difficult negotiations in the face of the global illicit tobacco trade. But they cannot leave this meeting justifying inaction by saying it was too difficult – the costs are simply too great,” says Huber.

An investigation found that approximately six terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Real IRA and the Columbian FARC, are using tobacco smuggling to fund their activities.

Due to the small size and weight of cigarettes, and the high profit margins they bring, cigarette smuggling is a highly appealing business to criminal networks and terrorist groups.

The investigation, part of a series titled “Tobacco Underground,” was conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/tobacco/

Another study -- the most authoritative report yet produced on the extent of the global illicit trade in cigarettes -- prepared by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, shows:

* Updated country level estimates of the illicit cigarette market around the world, using 2007 data or as close to 2007 as available

* Evidence that higher income countries,where cigarettes are more expensive, have lower levels of cigarette smuggling than lower income countries, contrary to the tobacco industry claim that the overall level of smuggling is dependent on cigarette price;

* Evidence that the burden of cigarette smuggling falls disproportionately on low and middle income countries,where the majority of the world's tobacco users live;

* Estimates of the number of lives saved and revenue gained globally in the future is smuggling were eliminated;

* that11.6 per cent of the global cigarette market is illicit, equivalent to 657 billion cigarettes a year and $40.5billion in lost revenue;

* if this illicit trade was eliminated, governments would gain, in principle immediately, at least $31 billion, and from 2030 onwards save over160,000 lives a year, resulting from an overall increase in cigarette price of 3.9 per cent and a consequent fall in consumption of 2.0 per cent. In just six years over a million lives would be saved, the vast majority of them in middle and low income countries.

fctc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=291:inb3-r ..

PROFESSOR JOHN F. BANZHAF III
Professor of Public Interest Law, and Executive Director
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2013 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, USA
(202) 659-4310 // (703) 527-8418 // ash.org/