Ipswich tobacconist forced to close due to availability of cheaper illegal cigarettes

One of the longest-established shops in Ipswich town centre is closing its doors due to loss of footfall and the easy availability of cheap and illegal cigarettes.

According to local reports, M.W. Ashton, a shop that has been a specialist tobacconist in Lloyds Avenue since 1946 – selling tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, pipes and other smoking equipment, is now set to close down its shutters.

The number of smokers has fallen dramatically over the last few decades as the health dangers, new legislation, and increasing taxes take their toll.

According to Aston’s manager Shirley Debenham, two main impacts on their business was the loss of footfall along Lloyds Avenue – and the easy availability of cheap, black-market, cigarettes and tobacco that had been smuggled into the country.

She said people were buying smuggled tobacco for a fraction of the prices they were able to charge as taxes had gone up to deter smoking.

The report brings to light the extent of impact of illegal cigarettes on retailers. Policing smuggled tobacco is the responsibility of HM Revenue and Customs and also the respective county council’s trading standards department, which have been taking shops to court if they are found to be selling smuggled tobacco products.

Investigators last year have seized more than £7 million worth of cigarettes in a blitz on the illegal tobacco trade. They recovered 13 million cigarettes and 4,300 kilos of hand-rolling tobacco in the first year of a major Trading Standards operation.

The action involved raids on shops and homes in England and Wales, with seizures at the border of smuggled tobacco and cash and the closure of illegal factories abroad. During the year investigators also seized 109 kilos of flavoured shisha pipe tobacco products.

National Trading Standards said the illegal tobacco trade robbed shopkeepers of profits and cost the Treasury £2 billion a year in lost tax.

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