Abstract
BackgroundCigarette smuggling is a major public health issue, stimulating increased tobacco consumption and undermining tobacco control measures. China is the ultimate prize among tobacco's emerging markets, and is also believed to have the world's largest cigarette smuggling problem. Previous work has demonstrated the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in this illicit trade within Asia and the former Soviet Union.Methods and FindingsThis paper analyses internal documents of BAT available on site from the Guildford Depository and online from the BAT Document Archive. Documents dating from the early 1900s to 2003 were searched and indexed on a specially designed project database to enable the construction of an historical narrative. Document analysis incorporated several validation techniques within a hermeneutic process. This paper describes the huge scale of this illicit trade in China, amounting to billions of (United States) dollars in sales, and the key supply routes by which it has been conducted. It examines BAT's efforts to optimise earnings by restructuring operations, and controlling the supply chain and pricing of smuggled cigarettes.ConclusionsOur research shows that smuggling has been strategically critical to BAT's ongoing efforts to penetrate the Chinese market, and to its overall goal to become the leading company within an increasingly global industry. These findings support the need for concerted efforts to strengthen global collaboration to combat cigarette smuggling.
Highlights
Cigarette smuggling has emerged as a critical public health issue
Previous work has demonstrated the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in this illicit trade within Asia and the former Soviet Union
Our research shows that smuggling has been strategically critical to BAT’s ongoing efforts to penetrate the Chinese market, and to its overall goal to become the leading company within an increasingly global industry
Summary
Cigarette smuggling has emerged as a critical public health issue. As well as being the source of huge losses in government revenues, smuggling makes cigarettes more affordable, stimulating consumption and undermining control measures, most notably among youth and low-income consumers [1,2]. Cigarette smuggling is a major public health issue, stimulating increased tobacco consumption and undermining tobacco control measures. Governments can control consumption, and raise substantial tax revenues, by levying high taxes on tobacco. This is undermined when tobacco is smuggled into the country and sold illegally. Following a legal case in the United States, millions of pages of BAT internal documents (dating back to the early 1900s) have been made public. They are held in a depository in the United Kingdom, and most can be seen online. Researchers have already undertaken wide-ranging studies of these documents and have drawn conclusions about the way BAT has sought to enter emerging markets throughout the world
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