Illegal tobacco, vaping products and alcohol
Illegal tobacco, vaping products and alcohol
We remain fully committed to stopping the supply of illegal tobacco, vaping products and alcohol in Newcastle.
We regularly work with Northumbria Police, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and Immigration Enforcement to target those responsible. Our efforts have seen hundreds of thousands of illegal cigarettes, illegal vaping products and significant quantities of bootleg drink seized from homes and businesses.
Report illegal tobacco and alcohol
You can report anyone selling illegal tobacco and alcohol to us anonymously.
To do so:
You can also contact us by phone or email. To do so:
- call 0191 278 7878
- email Trading Standards
Illegal tobacco and cigarettes
Trade in illegal tobacco costs the Government over £2 billion in lost tax revenue each year.
It also:
• increases the supply of tobacco to young people and the chance that children take up smoking
• damages businesses that do follow the rules
• harms public health
• supports crime and nuisance in our communities
• could lead to more fires in people’s homes
How to spot illegal tobacco
To spot illegal tobacco look our for:
• unusual taste
• popular brand or foreign brand names such as Raquel or Jin Ling
• cheap price (less than £5 for a pack of 20)
• health warnings on cigarette packaging that might not be in English, might not display a picture, might not be printed on a white background and may have different sized lettering to usual
• unusual packaging (spelling mistakes, wrong logos, discoloured packaging)
• the print quality of the detail on the cigarette being noticeably worse
Penalties for selling illegal tobacco
If you sell illicit tobacco you could be fined up to £10,000.
Trading Standards officers can refer cases to HMRC for further investigation and that can lead to:
• tobacco being seized
• fines of £2,500 to £10,000
• the loss of your licence to buy and sell tobacco
Tackling illegal tobacco sales in the North East
The Keep it Out campaign, led by Fresh Smoke Free North East, targets the illegal sale of tobacco.
Since 2009 it has:
• reduced the volume of illegal tobacco bought by 39%
• seen the number of smokers buying illegal tobacco fall by 10%
• saved around £36 million duty and tax
Stop smoking
For information and support to help you quit see: stop smoking services in Newcastle
Kings Speech 2024
"A Bill will be introduced to progressively increase the age at which people can buy cigarettes and impose limits on the sale and marketing of vapes [Tobacco and Vapes Bill]".
Tobacco and Vapes Bill
On the 5 November 2024 the Government introduced the Tobacco and Vapes Bill at Westminster.
The Bill aims to introduce a progressive smoking ban to gradually end the sale of tobacco products across the UK, so that anyone born on or after 1st January 2009 will never be able to legally be sold cigarettes. This means there will be no restrictions on people who can already legally smoke.
The Bill strengthens enforcement activity including the extension of the Tobacco Retailers Register to include vapes and other nicotine products. It also includes provision to allow for the introduction of a retail licensing scheme in the longer term to replace the Registration scheme. This will be subject to public consultation.
In addition, the new Bill includes further welcome enhancements including the extension of existing tobacco advertising, sponsorship and brand-sharing rules to include cigarette papers, herbal smoking products, vaping products and other nicotine products. The legislation will also allow regulations to be made to extend smoke-free provisions in public outdoor places (or workplaces) and to make smoke-free places also vape-free and heated tobacco-free.
Minister Nesbitt said:
“The proposed measures in this Bill offer a huge public health opportunity to reduce preventable death and illness. This is particularly important in communities where the prevalence of tobacco use is the largest contributor to health inequalities. Reducing these health inequalities across Northern Ireland is one of my key areas of focus and I am positive this legislation will make a very significant difference going forward.”
The sale of disposable vapes will be banned in England from June 2025; the Government has confirmed.
Ministers say the move, first announced in January 2024 by the previous government but not enacted before the general election, is intended to prevent environmental damage, and protect children's health.
Disposable vapes are difficult to recycle and typically end up landfill, where their batteries can leak harmful waste like battery acid, lithium, and mercury into the environment, the Government said.
Batteries thrown into household waste also cause hundreds of fires in bin lorries and waste-processing centres every year.
The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) estimates almost five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown into general waste each week last year, a nearly four-fold increase on the year before.
Defra's Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh, whose role focuses on reducing waste in the economy, said disposable vapes were “extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities". That is why we are banning single use vapes as we end this nation’s throwaway culture," she said.
Public Health Minister Andrew Gwynne said disposables had become the "product of choice for the majority of kids vaping today" and banning them would "reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people".
The Government plans to introduce legislation to ban the sale of disposable vapes from 1 June 2025, allowing retailers time to sell their remaining stock.
The measure is separate from Government plans to end smoking by banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after January 2009.
Stubbing out the problem: A new strategy to tackle illicit tobacco
On the 29 January 2024 the Conservative Government announced a new strategy on dealing with the issue of illicit tobacco. To access the announcement go to Gov.uk.
Vaping Products
The MHRA is the competent authority for the UKs notification scheme for nicotine containing Vaping products (E-cigarettes and refill containers) in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and is responsible, working with other regulatory bodies, for implementing a number of provisions under Part 6 of the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR), as amended
The TRPR introduced rules which ensure:
- minimum standards for the safety and quality of all e-cigarettes and refill containers (otherwise known as e-liquids)
- that information is provided to consumers so that they can make informed choices
- an environment that protects children from starting to use these products.
- The requirements:
- restrict e-cigarette tanks to a capacity of no more than 2ml
- restrict the maximum volume of nicotine-containing e-liquid for sale in one refill container to 10ml
- restrict e-liquids to a nicotine strength of no more than 20mg/ml
- require nicotine-containing products or their packaging to be child-resistant and tamper evident
- ban certain ingredients including colourings, caffeine and taurine
- include new labelling requirements and warnings
- require all e-cigarettes and e-liquids be notified and published by the MHRA before they can be sold
To access more information on the legislative requirements go to Gov.uk
Contact us
To contact our Trading Standards service:
write to Trading Standards, Directorate of City Operations, Neighbourhoods and Regulatory Services, Civic Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8QH
Phone: 0191 2116102. Email Trading Standards
Newsletter
We also, twice a year, publish a Trading standards newsletter. For the latest edition see: High Standard (pdf 1.5 mb)
The impact of our work
In order to illustrate some of our successful enforcement actions see:
Sniffer dog Cooper finds an illegal stash of tobacco hidden deep inside a brick-built barbecue.
Illegal haul of vapes and tobacco seized
Bensham and Newcastle police raids uncover £70,000 worth of suspected illegal tobacco and vapes
Newcastle shop closes over allegations it sold vapes to children
More than £200,000 worth of cigarettes seized in crackdown on illegal goods
Trading standards seize 76,000 illegal vapes in Newcastle after 'explosion' in e-cigarette sales
Police and trading standards seize £80,000 in illegal cigarettes, vapes and tobacco in Bensham raid
Jordan North: How safe is vaping for my health?
Tobacco worth £300,000 recovered in Raid
Newcastle shop shut down after £80,000 worth of counterfeit cigarettes and vapes seized
Five Newcastle shops caught selling vapes to children as £50,877 of counterfeit items seized
Fenham Euro Market ordered to close after selling illegal vapes and cigarettes to children
Fireworks seized in Byker Wall after reports they were being sold to children from a van
Did you know?
Operation CeCe which is a HMRC sponsored operation delivered by National Trading Standards through local authorities is now fully implemented and achieving significant results across Newcastle. In 2021-2022 we seized some 611,514 suspected alleged cigarettes together with 194.84 Kg's of suspected alleged Hand Rolling Tobacco. In 2022-2023 we seized some 584,220 suspected illegal cigarettes and 166.15 Kg's of suspected illegal Hand Rolling Tobacco.
In 2023-2024 we seized some 544,210 suspected illegal cigarettes and 171.5 Kg's of suspected illegal Hand Rolling Tobacco.
In the first six months of 2024-2025 the service has seized some 414,880 suspected illegal cigarettes and 67.4 Kg’s of suspected illegal Hand Rolling Tobacco.
When unlicensed premises are found to be selling illegal tobacco and alcohol, they are at risk of prosecutions as well as the possibility of a Closure Order under the provisions of the Anti-social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014. To see where Closure Orders have been applied for by Northumbria Police and granted on 3 premises in Newcastle go to the Chronicle of the 26 June 2023 and Tyne Tees of the 26 June 2023.
Since 2021 as part of Operation Joseph which is delivered on behalf of the Government by the National Trading Standards Board, we have seized and removed from the market some 86,894 non-compliant and illegal vaping products. To see articles related to this work go to the Chronicle of the 15 December 2023, the Chronicle of the 12 July 2024, the Chronicle of the 30 July 2024, BBC News of the 30 October 2024 and the Chronicle of the 30 October 2024.
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