Black-market tobacco shops are moving online, offering express delivery and steep bulk discounts to evade authorities and stay afloat as the state intensifies its crackdown on illicit sellers.
Through a nondescript e-commerce site, The Age successfully ordered a carton of Manchester Blue – a commonly used illicit cigarette brand – delivered directly to its Docklands office. The price came to about $15 for a packet of 20 cigarettes compared with a legal pack, which usually hovers between $40 and $50.
Users are encouraged to buy in bulk for discounts, and there is an option for express delivery. All major payment services are available, including PayPal, credit card, Apple Pay and bank transfers. Updates on orders are communicated through WhatsApp, with tracking available through Australia Post.
In just over a week, the cigarettes were available for pick-up at a nearby inner-city package locker.
Some websites had hundreds or thousands of reviews on sites such as TrustPilot, going back months.
Victoria’s illicit tobacco market, which is considered one of the largest, most lucrative and most violent in the country, is adapting to the new powers the state government finally granted to Tobacco Licensing Victoria after long delays.
So far, authorities have shut down 62 tobacco shops selling illicit products or operating without a licence, mostly in Melbourne’s CBD and the Stonnington Council area, which takes in South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor.
As The Age reported earlier in October, illicit tobacco sellers are already implementing workarounds to avoid inspections, including selling only at weekends, hiding products in disguised boxes, and shifting their stockpiles into the boots of vehicles.
Additionally, some tobacco shops in Melbourne’s inner north are no longer selling illicit tobacco from their shops for fear of being inspected, but are instead offering local delivery services.
Associate professor of criminology at Deakin University James Martin said the pivot to online retailers and home delivery via the black market has been fast-moving.
“Black markets are inefficient, but they’re really resilient, and they’re highly adaptable,” Martin said.
“You just get constant displacement or balloon effects happening.”
Australians spend $8.5 billion a year on illicit nicotine and because there’s such high demand, Martin says, black-market operators shift to other avenues. When the government and law enforcement begin to react, organised crime shifts resources online.
Online illicit tobacco sellers are also shifting to using paid advertising features on Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
I was initially served an ad on Facebook that prompted me to research whether these were legitimate sellers or scams that ultimately wouldn’t ship any tobacco products.
Once I interacted with the initial ad, dozens of similar advertisements for the same website and others began flooding all my social media feeds.
They ranged from explicit tobacco advertising to more covert ads that don’t appear to be offering tobacco products.
Advertising any tobacco or nicotine products, illicit or not, is illegal in Australia. Despite serving ads to Australians, the owners of the page I used were located in Ireland and Vietnam.
In September, a Meta spokesperson said ads for tobacco and vapes were not allowed, but they would not refund ads that had already run.
“I can’t see a future where the illicit market is under control at the current legal cigarette prices,” Edward Jegasothy says, a senior lecturer at Sydney University’s school of public health.
Reducing the tobacco tax by 75 and 80 per cent respectively are ideas proposed by One Nation and the Coalition, and is supported by some public health experts, academics and economists.
The Cancer Council, the Australian Medical Association and Quit argue a tobacco excise cut would increase smoking rates and enrich big tobacco companies.
Instead, these groups want stronger border controls, licensing laws and fewer licensed tobacco shops.
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