How we can kneecap the dodgy durrie dealers
Wednesday, 8 July 2026
Sunny Kaushal is chair of the Dairy and Business Owners Group and former chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group for Victims of Retail Crime.
OPINION: Who at the Ministry of Health thought it was a good idea to threaten Stuff’s morning quiz with prosecution under the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act? Stuff’s sin? A 45-year-old cigarette advert as part of a visual question about Playboy magazine!
That threat was reported on the same day as Customs, Police and Health announced some 65,000 illegal cigarette packs will never get to the dodgy durrie dealers, following raids on suspected dealers.
Our group’s stance here isn’t new. Since 2022, we’ve warned about illegal tobacco being sold on Facebook Marketplace. It’s now tailor-made cigarettes.
As Dr Eric Crampton wrote in The Post last November, one Facebook trader was “selling 10-pack cartons of Joe Bennett’s excellent book, Double Happiness: How Bullshit Works – a book which happens to have been designed to look like a packet of cigarettes”. (It was supposed to be a cover for selling actual cigarettes.) Guess what? They’re still selling on Facebook in July 2026 at $15 a pack. How does Facebook get away with it while Stuff gets hauled over the coals?
Before any official thinks about writing to The Post or to me, this is opinion, not an advertisement.
Read more:
Waikato retailers among those busted for illegal ciggie sales
Casey Costello to bring paper to Cabinet to crack down on NZ illicit tobacco market
Yet the threat to a Smokefree NZ is obvious because smokers are rational consumers too. A $20 pack of fake branded Marlboro is a lot less than $50.50 for the real thing, and fake branded cigarettes, along with Manchester and Double Happiness sold at volume, renders excise tax inert.
It could be worse. We could be Australia, the crash test dummy of policy failure.
In early June, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said 80% of all nicotine consumed there is illegal. Yes, 80%. In December 2016, Australians consumed just over 5 tonnes of nicotine but it hit 8 tonnes in December 2025.
In other words, every effort to reduce smoking has been wiped out by illegal cigarettes there. This is not a Big Tobacco claim either. It’s Australia’s version of Stats NZ.
You see, illegal tobacco is on its own continuum of badness. As our Parliament considers “modern slavery”, illegal cigarettes reward actual slavery while enriching organised criminals to terrorists.
This is not helped by “expert” denial.
In 2024, professors Chris Bullen and Janet Hoek wrote an article, “False zombie arguments about illicit tobacco shouldn’t be given any more oxygen”. Yet just a few months ago, Otago academics pulled a handbrake turn with a piece titled, “Government can respond to illicit tobacco without falling for tobacco industry tactics, say experts”. In 2025, Professor Hoek wrote, “Six ideas NZ could borrow from Australia to cut smoking rates”. How did the Australian Bureau of Statistics put it last month? “The quantity of tobacco consumed per person increased 22% since 2017.”
When it comes to solutions, we already have a form of licensing. Every general retailer is meant to “notify” and report vape sales annually, and almost all sell cigarettes. In other words, the Ministry of Health should know where most legal sellers are.
Yet licensing is no magic bullet. Illegal cigarettes are, well, illegal. Illegal sellers are unlikely to register, just as they’re unlikely to pay GST or become employer of the year.
Selling illegal cigarettes is high return but low risk because the only way to land a penalty is a time-consuming and expensive prosecution. We have frustrated retailers reporting sellers who aren’t being shut down and that has to change and quickly. The Minister, Casey Costello, and the coalition Government deserve kudos for understanding it’s a huge problem and we look forward to their solutions. Here are ours to sit alongside prosecution.
First, stop specialist vaping retailers (SVR) being able to sell smokes. It’s crazy that up to 30% of their revenue can come from herbal or tobacco cigarettes. A smoker may come in for advice on a vape or smokeless tobacco but walk out with a pack of durries. Specialist vaping retailers need to be just that and this is an easily enforced fix. Set permitted SVR sales revenue from smoking products at zero.
Second, introduce big fines like $10,000 per illegal pack, meaning a carton adds up to $100,000 in fines. Fines, known as strict liability offences, put the onus on the seller to prove they’re selling legitimate goods. Good luck there.
As for the worker behind the counter, hit them with a big fine, like $5000. They know right from wrong and suddenly workers will refuse to sell. What about taking a leaf from the Fisheries Act and introducing broad seizure powers for all “regulated products” in their possession, legal or illegal, along with laptops, point of sale systems, records and, if found in a van, the van too.
Third, we need to use legal market forces against this insurgent black market. This means putting all smoke-free options into the market to totally collapse cigarette demand.
Legalising Swedish snus and nicotine pouches will take smoking well below the 5% that we’re close to, but importantly, will help keep it that way.
Anything less than a consumer-led market shift means the gangs will unpick policy, just like they’ve done in Australia.
- For an alternative perspective on the debate over the best way to tackle illegal tobacco, see Janet Hoek’s article, Cutting excise tax is not going to solve illicit tobacco.
The Dairy and Business Owners Group does not receive funding or financial support from the tobacco industry, but does engage with it as a supplier to group members who include dairy and convenience store owners.