Assessing cigarette smuggling at a time of border closure to international tourists: survey of littered packs in New Zealand

Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) is a country with a tobacco endgame plan that includes denicotinisation of tobacco. Because of concerns these measures could increase tobacco smuggling, we aimed to provide new baseline data on such smuggling. We studied littered tobacco packs during a ‘natural experiment’ when no international tourists and relatively few NZ travellers arrived due to COVID-19-related border controls (eg, typically requiring 2 weeks of facility-based quarantine for NZ citizens only). That is, we assumed that during this period, the proportion of littered packs which were foreign was likely to reflect levels of smuggling. Evidence suggests tobacco smuggling into NZ occurs mainly via shipping containers, the postal system and international airline staff.