Cigarette smugglers kill corner shops
12 April 2012
Corner shops are losing more than £50,000 a year each because of tobacco smuggling.
A survey by the Tobacco Alliance, which represents 21,000 independent tobacconists, said that smuggling had caused shops to suffer a 25 per cent drop in cigarette sales with a knock-on effect on the sale of other goods and a loss of jobs.
The alliance wants high UK tax rates on tobacco to be reduced to those in the rest of Europe.
