In March this year, the UK government announced a £10 million grant to the National Trading Standards Department to provide financial support for a one-year enforcement operation to curb the increasingly rampant illegal tobacco and e-cigarette trade, and plans to recruit about 80 new apprentice law enforcement officers to strengthen community-level inspections and crackdowns.
This funding complements the more than £100 million illegal tobacco strategy previously jointly developed by the UK Home Office and the Border Department. In the future, it will also cooperate with the new e-cigarette tax and new powers to impose on-the-spot fines on retailers to be implemented in 2026, jointly building a comprehensive line of defense towards a “smoke-free generation”. Despite this, the scale of £10 million this time was criticized as a “drop in the bucket” to fight the huge black market after multiple evaluations.
Industry experts pointed out that the amount of illegal e-cigarette products seized in 2024 alone exceeded £9 million, a year-on-year increase of 44 percentage points. If it relies solely on one-time grants, it will be difficult to fundamentally reduce the profit margins of the supply chain and organized crime networks.
Independent data shows that in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the trading standards department in England seized a total of about 1.19 million illegal e-cigarettes, an increase of about 59 percentage points over the previous year. This not only reflects the urgency of law enforcement needs, but also exposes that the current regulatory measures are not yet sufficient to deal with the spread of dangerous products in the market.
Faced with the growing illegal market, the e-cigarette industry has also begun to call on the government to carry out more systematic regulatory reforms. Many MPs and experts proposed in the parliamentary debate that a retail licensing system should be introduced, tax integration and product quality certification should be strengthened, and a long-term and stable law enforcement investment mechanism should be established so as to work together in multiple dimensions at the source, circulation links and terminal sales.
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The industry association emphasized that it is difficult to continuously improve the market environment by relying solely on special funding. It is necessary to fundamentally improve consumer education, increase support for compliant brands, and continuously optimize regulatory policies through data monitoring and scientific research support in order to combat illegal trade in the long term and help adult users switch safely.
Experts suggest that the government should further introduce a national retailer registration and licensing system under the existing framework, promote cross-departmental information sharing and improve border inspection technology, and provide tax incentives and publicity support to compliant manufacturers to strengthen the attractiveness of the legitimate market and force the gradual disintegration of the illegal chain.
In summary, although the British government’s 10 million pounds of funding has provided short-term assistance in combating illegal e-cigarette transactions, in the face of the emerging black market and the ever-changing product forms, it is more necessary to support it with systematic reforms and diversified supervision to build a solid defense line from the source, circulation and terminal levels to achieve the dual goals of protecting public health and maintaining a legal market.
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