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<\/p>\nIt feels like an ordinary, legitimate online shopping experience.<\/p>\n
A typical e-commerce layout, health warnings and a wide variety of tobacco products are for sale, but the price and the form of payment reveal this website is a black-market business.<\/p>\n
Australia’s illicit tobacco market is now proliferating online, with dozens of websites promoting cheap tobacco and vapes, and offering express delivery through Australia Post across the country.<\/p>\n
To illustrate the widespread access to these illicit products, we purchased a carton containing 10 packets of illicit tobacco through one of these websites, to be delivered to the ABC’s Melbourne office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The carton cost $150, about a third of the price of the equivalent legal product.<\/p>\n
For an extra $20 there is also an option for express delivery.<\/p>\n
This site asks for payment via direct bank transfer and then liaises with its customers through WhatsApp, where it provides them an Australia Post tracking number.<\/p>\n
Within three business days, the products were delivered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This carton of illegal cigarettes was purchased online and delivered by Australia Post. (ABC News: Matthew Holmes)<\/p>\n
The packaging was nondescript and discreet but inside was the product fuelling underworld violence and undermining Australia’s strict tobacco control policies.<\/p>\n
Australia’s Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner, Amber Shuhyta, told 7.30 that while shopfronts are still the major area for illicit tobacco and nicotine sales, online sales is an evolving area.<\/p>\n
“We’re definitely looking at disrupting websites selling illicit tobacco, along with the Therapeutic Goods Association and the Department of Health,” Ms Shuhyta said.<\/p>\n
“But as shopfronts close, we need to make sure that we are taking down websites so that the trade cannot proliferate there.”Enforcement ‘probably not’ effective<\/p>\n
Nowhere in the country has the violent competition for control of the illicit market played out as starkly as in Victoria, where there has been almost 200 arson attacks<\/a> and six murders.<\/p>\n Detective Inspector Chris Murray is the head of Victoria Police’s Arson Squad. (ABC News: Andrew Altree-Williams)<\/p>\n At a recent Master Grocers Australia forum on black markets, the head of Victoria Police’s Arson Squad, Detective Inspector Chris Murray, made a frank admission.<\/p>\n “We’ve made over 500 arrests for the tobacco arsons but I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m not sure that it’s made a difference, which is sad \u2026 it’s not through lack of trying,” he said.<\/p>\n “The two biggest sources of income for organised crime now; it was drugs, I think on par is tobacco, which is just incredible.<\/p>\n “They [organised crime groups] have got bigger budgets than law enforcement agencies, which is just frightening.”<\/p>\n Authorities at every level have been responding to the illicit tobacco trade with increasingly aggressive enforcement.<\/p>\n In the 2024\/2025 financial year, the Australian Border Force seized more than 2.1 kilotons of illicit tobacco and more than 6 million illicit vapes coming into the country.<\/p>\n Michael Outram is the former Australian Border Force commissioner. (ABC News: Adam Kennedy)<\/p>\n Former Australian Border Force commissioner Michael Outram, who now works as a consultant for border security and technology companies, questions whether the enforcement action to date has been effective.<\/p>\n “Is it having the desired effect in terms of denting the illicit tobacco market?” he said.<\/p>\n “I would say on current evidence, from what I can see that’s publicly available, it’s probably not.”<\/p>\n Ms Shuhyta believes the agencies involved in tackling the issue at both a state and federal level are making an impact on the illicit trade.<\/p>\n “We are seeing more seizures, more arrests, more store closures. We are seeing more confiscation of assets,” she said.<\/p>\n “This is record activity that our frontline services are doing and my hat’s off to all of those people working on … making a true difference in this issue.”<\/p>\n Massive profit margins<\/p>\n Australian Bureau of Statistics data released in June found 80 per cent of all tobacco and nicotine products consumed in Australia in 2025 came from illicit sources.<\/a><\/p>\n The data also showed nicotine consumption in Australia between 2017 and 2025, increased by almost 40 per cent.<\/p>\n Websites like this one are selling illicit tobacco. (ABC News)<\/p>\n Mr Outram told 7.30 the profit margins for organised crime to import and sell illicit tobacco in Australia are too great.<\/p>\n “If I was to buy 10 million cigarettes, cheap whites in Asia, I could probably buy them [and] import them in a container into Australia for about $250,000 and that container would translate to about $7.5 million on the street,” he said.<\/p>\n Mr Outram said one out of every 10 of these containers is enough for organised crime to turn a profit.<\/p>\n “If I lose nine of those containers, the one that gets through is still paying for three times my outcome \u2026 so it’s a staggering margin.”\u00a0<\/p>\n He estimates the ABF is only x-ray screening a small percentile of all shipping containers arriving on our shores.<\/p>\n “The Australian Border Force, based on publicly available data today, I would estimate, are x-raying about 1 per cent of containers,” he said.<\/p>\n “So they’re not going to see nine out of 10 and of course there’s no customs organisation in the world that’s screening 100 per cent.<\/p>\n “You’ve got to work out where in this entire supply chain can you attack it in terms of putting in choke points to get the price [of] illicit tobacco up, and I think we could do better at the border.<\/p>\n “Border Force officers are doing amazing work, but there’s been a lack of investment in modern technology for the Border Force … \u00a0over many, many years through successive governments.”<\/p>\n Ms Shuhyta defended the job the ABF are doing.<\/p>\n “The ABF has been doing a substantial amount in the last 12 months to increase seizures and detections at the border,” she told 7.30.<\/p>\n “If you scanned absolutely everything that came through the Australian border, it would stop the economy. It would reduce productivity. The ABF [is] doing a realistic job in terms of targeting where there is risk so that they get the biggest impact.”<\/p>\n She added that the issue of illicit tobacco cannot simply be looked at through the lens of health or border protection.<\/p>\n “This is a serious and organised crime issue,” she said.<\/p>\n “There are sophisticated criminal networks exploiting a market opportunity where it is cheap for them to get a product that is highly addictive.”<\/p>\n Watch 7.30<\/a>, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview<\/a> and ABC TV<\/p>\n Contact 7.30<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/327a7be643fc1577adb90358e5e45098.jpeg\")
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