• tobacco industry
• illegal tobacco products
• tobacco industry documents

Tobacco industry executives have a track record of cheating and lying, but sometimes they tell the truth. On 3 February 2000, under the banner ‘Dilemma of a cigarette exporter’, Kenneth Clarke wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian in his capacity as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco (BAT). In this piece, Kenneth Clarke admitted that the multinational company supplies cigarettes knowing they are likely to end up on the black market. Mr Clarke said: “Where any government is unwilling to act or their efforts are unsuccessful, we act, completely within the law, on the basis that our brands will be available alongside those of our competitors in the smuggled as well as the legitimate market”.1 The objective of tobacco companies is more sales, both legal and illegal.

The work of Gilmore et al suggests that the tobacco industry remains involved in tobacco smuggling and tries to control systems to reduce tobacco smuggling.2 To achieve this, tobacco companies focus on track and trace systems and promote Codentify as a system to mark packs. Codentify was originally patented by Philip Morris International (PMI) in the mid-2000s following its out-of-court settlement with the EU. In 2010, PMI licensed Codentify for free …