Dr. John Legge
speaker
108 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Dr. John Legge’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Sure.
So they were formed in May and that's made up of customs who police it at the border, obviously, the police who look at it in the community and broadly share intelligence around that.
and health officials as well who manage the public health side of it and the harm that goes into the communities through illicit tobacco.
And so they've been formed as this sort of intelligence-sharing body that is looking to disrupt the illicit tobacco trade in New Zealand.
And last week there was quite a big bust.
There was.
So we heard that was the first official operation conducted under the group.
They arrested five people and conducted a number of search warrants across Auckland, Waikato and Rotorua.
And on top of that, they seized, I believe it was over a million illicit cigarettes, 1.3 million illicit cigarettes and $170,000 cash.
And that's the first real...
big action that we've seen from that group.
So is this coming in in both loose tobacco and rolled cigarettes?
Well, there's a few of these shops.
So we also heard from Customs last week that there are shops that ostensibly look like dairies.
They might sell other products, but they've been set up for the purposes of selling illicit tobacco.
And I've been to a shop in South Auckland that they sell other products.
They sell soft drinks.
They sell chips, sweets, whatever.
But then they are also selling under the counter these cheap smokes.
So they're literally under the counter.
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