Dr. Xanthe Weston

but they're feeding organized crime.

And these are the same people who are involved in people smuggling and sex trafficking and all these other things that we would go, oh, that's awful.

Yeah, I don't want to support that.

But no, oh my God, we wouldn't support that.

But I'll go and buy my cheap cigarettes because I don't want to pay 50 bucks a pack, which, yeah, okay.

But you're actually giving this money to these organized criminals, just like when you buy illicit alcohol.

But

So it feels like it's only one person doing something a bit naughty, but actually the people engaging with black market goods are feeding this industry and causing this harm.

If there was no money in it, these criminals wouldn't be doing it.

But equally, do we need to start looking at the way things are taxed?

Because the more and more expensive these things get, people will find ways around it.

The criminals will get involved and supply it on the black market.

And these are the kind of issues we're going to have.

So this is not something we can police our way out of.

This needs to be a whole system.

We need to look at the way we're taxing things.

We need to look at the conversations we're having around this.

Do not feed these criminal gangs by buying these products.

Make it too expensive.

Yeah.