CHEAP CIGARETTES SUPPLIED BY DRUGS GANGS

Organised criminals involved in drug dealing are behind the deluge of cheap
cigarettes being smuggled into Scotland.

The trade in smuggled cigarettes costs the Scottish economy tens of
millions of pounds every year and particularly hits corner shops and
tobacconists.

Customs officers are bracing themselves for a vast increase in cigarette
smuggling into Scottish airports between now and 1 December when 20p goes
on to the price of a packet of 20 in the United Kingdom.

John MacDougall, the head of FAST, the Flexible Anti- Smuggling Team, based
at Glasgow Airport, said that in all major UK cities gangs involved in drug
dealing were behind the cigarette-smuggling trade.

The huge profits they gleaned off the sale of the illegal cigarettes helped
to fund their drugs operations, he said.

Some 2.5 million bootleg cigarettes, worth tens of millions of pounds, were
seized at Scottish airports over the past 12 months.

Customs investigators are convinced organised crime is behind the smuggling
racket, with drugs barons paying unemployed "mules" to travel to the Canary
Islands with empty cases to load with cheap cigarettes.

Popular brand names can be bought for only UKP7 a carton, or a quarter of
what they cost in Britain. They are then sold on to street traders, markets
and shopkeepers, who sell them at a huge profit.

The Customs and Excise warning came as the Scottish Grocer's Federation
warned that organised gangs of bootleggers were costing independent
retailers hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

The difference in duty rates between the UK and the rest of Europe means
that criminals are using the more flexible arrangement now allowed under
the free market conditions to bring millions of pounds worth of goods,
including alcohol, from abroad to be resold at less than half the price of
UK duty-paid goods.

The smiuuglers are costing British taxpayers an estimated UKP1 billion a
year in lost duty.

The president of the federation, Eddie Thompson, said: "Unless the
Government takes the strong action they have promised, this criminal
activity will continue to escalate ...There are warehouses full of cheap
cigarettes in these holiday isles which we are sure have been organised by
criminal groups based in the UK.

"We reckon the gangs are involved in the supply of drugs... the huge
profits these gangs make from cigarete smuggling go towards drugs
operations."