JT's Position on Illicit Trade of Tobacco Products
JT's policy
Tobacco contraband and counterfeiting are illegal activities and JT continuously fights against entities involved in illicit trade of tobacco products. JT is not, and will not be involved in the illegal sale of its products.
JT's Efforts
- JT sells its products in accordance with the following strict trade principles:
1) Establishing the legitimacy of each of our business partners. 2) Monitoring the product volumes supplied to individual markets to ensure they are commensurate with our understanding of the legitimate demand. 3) Requiring that our business partners only sell our products in the intended market. - All JT's business partners must abide by these principles. If we suspect a breach of any of these principles, we take measures which may include requests for correction, suspension of sales and the reporting of the violation to the relevant authorities.
- JT collaborates on anti-illicit trade issues with governments and other industries.
- JT will continue to fight against illicit trade in collaboration with governments, including the Japanese government.
- JT is involved in various international and/or cross-industry organizations aimed at protecting trademark rights from infringement. One example is BASCAP, (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy: A cross-border, multi-industry project aimed at addressing the issue of counterfeiting and piracy) an arm of the International Chamber of Commerce.
- Outside Japan, JT International S.A. (JTI) is diligently tackling illicit trade in alignment with JT's policy.
"JTI is not, and will not be involved in the illegal sale of its products. JTI is committed to do everything possible to prevent its products ending up on the illegal market. JTI is committed to being part of the solution."
For further details, please visit the Corporate Responsibility section on the JTI web site.
Global scale of tobacco illicit trade (from public sources)
- In July 2006, the World Customs Organization (WCO) declared that "tobacco and cigarette smuggling remain a growing global problem."
- In September 2007, the Parliament of the European Union published statistics showing that "in the EU, illicit cigarettes worth €460 million in taxes were seized in 2006."
- In December 2009, HM Revenues and Customs in Britain reported that the illicit cigarette market is estimated to account for between 6 and 17 percent of the total British cigarette market for the period of 2007-2008. (Measuring Tax Gaps - 2009).
- According to a Xinhua News Agency report in January 2010, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration of China stated that "in 2009, 6,014 cases of counterfeit production/sales which was worth more than 50,000 RMB were uncovered, 7,730 persons were detained; 6.1 billion units of counterfeit cigarettes and 398 units of cigarette machinery were seized."
- In the Japanese domestic market, the illicit trade in tobacco products is not an issue. In recent years only one incident has been reported. It involved an attempt to smuggle a substantial quantity of counterfeit cigarettes into Japan. However, collaboration between JT, our business partners and the authorities led to the prompt arrest of the perpetrators.