Euromonitor International is a well-known proprietary data source whose data regarding the global tobacco control community are available for purchase. Euromonitor presents country level data on most high-income countries, and many low-income and middle-income countries on tobacco production, consumption, trade and illicit trade as well as disaggregated data including prices and taxes and narratives on market conditions and tobacco control policy. Although mostly directed at the tobacco industry and allied users (ie, equity analysts), these data are also used by tobacco control researchers and advocates. Data are available from annual reports and from an online database, which are simultaneously updated. The authors subscribe to the data and use Euromonitor as a data source.

The illegal nature of illicit trade makes it intrinsically difficult to measure accurately. We have examined data on trends in illicit trade for specific countries published by Euromonitor from 1997 to 2012 and found striking inconsistencies between country-specific estimates for the same years …