Pubdate: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 Source: Scotsman (UK) Contact: http://www.scotsman.com Author: Graeme Stewart CHEAP CIGARETTES SUPPLIED BY DRUGS GANGS Organised criminals involved in drug dealing are behind the deluge of cheap cigarettes being smuggled into Scotland. The trade in smuggled cigarettes costs the Scottish economy tens of millions of pounds every year and particularly hits corner shops and tobacconists. Customs officers are bracing themselves for a vast increase in cigarette smuggling into Scottish airports between now and 1 December when 20p goes on to the price of a packet of 20 in the United Kingdom. John MacDougall, the head of FAST, the Flexible Anti- Smuggling Team, based at Glasgow Airport, said that in all major UK cities gangs involved in drug dealing were behind the cigarette-smuggling trade. The huge profits they gleaned off the sale of the illegal cigarettes helped to fund their drugs operations, he said. Some 2.5 million bootleg cigarettes, worth tens of millions of pounds, were seized at Scottish airports over the past 12 months. Customs investigators are convinced organised crime is behind the smuggling racket, with drugs barons paying unemployed "mules" to travel to the Canary Islands with empty cases to load with cheap cigarettes. Popular brand names can be bought for only UKP7 a carton, or a quarter of what they cost in Britain. They are then sold on to street traders, markets and shopkeepers, who sell them at a huge profit. The Customs and Excise warning came as the Scottish Grocer's Federation warned that organised gangs of bootleggers were costing independent retailers hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. The difference in duty rates between the UK and the rest of Europe means that criminals are using the more flexible arrangement now allowed under the free market conditions to bring millions of pounds worth of goods, including alcohol, from abroad to be resold at less than half the price of UK duty-paid goods. The smiuuglers are costing British taxpayers an estimated UKP1 billion a year in lost duty. The president of the federation, Eddie Thompson, said: "Unless the Government takes the strong action they have promised, this criminal activity will continue to escalate ...There are warehouses full of cheap cigarettes in these holiday isles which we are sure have been organised by criminal groups based in the UK. "We reckon the gangs are involved in the supply of drugs... the huge profits these gangs make from cigarete smuggling go towards drugs operations."