The UK’s Illicit Cigarette Trade

In the June 2025 issue of Tax Stamp & Traceability News™, we reported that KPMG had released its ‘Illicit Cigarette Consumption in Europe’ report for 2024, commissioned by Philip Morris. Prompted by a later in-depth report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on the illicit cigarette trade in Hull, a port city on England’s North Sea coast, this article examines the situation in the UK as a whole.

Map showing source of illicit cigarettes from and to the UK (source: KPMG).

While each country has its particularities in terms of illicit cigarette activity, all countries – certainly in Western Europe – are broadly similar, so this article can serve as a paradigm study. That said, the UK has ‘one of the highest tobacco taxation regimes in the world’, according to UK parliament member Gareth Davies.