Health Minister says cigarette smuggling will be ‘extremely difficult’ with plain packaging

Smuggling cigarettes would be extremely difficult in Ireland once plain packaging was introduced because they would look very different from everything else that was available in Europe, Minister for Health James Reilly has said.

Dr Reilly said he was “quite happy” plain packaging “will not lead to any increase in the illicit cigarette trade”.

The Minister said he wanted to “debunk the myth” put about by the tobacco industry of an increase in smuggling and illicit sales in Australia, since it became the first country in the world to introduced plain packaging for its tobacco products.

Studies sponsored by the tobacco industry purported to show an increase in smuggling and illicit sales, he said. “The reality is that 13 per cent of cigarettes are thought to be illegal in this country. Only 1 per cent of that is counterfeit, the rest is contraband, bought legally in other countries, produced by the said same tobacco companies with profit and then brought here to be sold cheaper by people engaged in illicit activity.”

Graphic images

Dr Reilly was speaking in the Seanad as the Upper House passed the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill, the legislation to change packaging on tobacco products to feature graphic images of diseases caused by smoking, with warnings such as “smoking kills” which will cover 65 per cent of the front and back of the package.

There will also be a message on each pack that “tobacco smoke contains over 70 substances known to cause cancer”. Dr Reilly said there was a “huge difference between the plain standardised packaging that we are talking about with the graphic illustration of what cigarettes do to us versus what is on the market today”.

“With us being the first country in Europe to do this, smuggling would be extremely difficult because they are different from everything else that is available in Europe.”

He also said the Revenue Commissioners “will now have a highlighted sophisticated stamp on packets, which will be extraordinarily difficult to tamper with and which will help distinguish between legal and illegal products”.

In one of the few votes on the legislation, NUI Senator John Crown pushed an amendment to prevent the use of "near-field communication" technologies to read barcodes on packets and allow cigarette sellers to establish a degree of contact as a marketing device with people who have bought cigarettes.

Independent Jillian van Turnhout said that with the resources available to the industry and the “plotting and planning” it engages in, manufacturers were “certain to devise new ways of marketing, branding and promoting its products which we cannot foresee”.

The Bill now goes to the Dáil.