At the International Tax Stamp Association (ITSA) webinar held on 24 September – with 24 revenue/customs authorities in attendance – guest speaker Dr Hana Ross from the University of Cape Town and Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies examined the prerequisites for achieving track and trace success on excisable products, referring to real-world cases of successful and failed systems.

Illicit trade in tobacco and vapor products has become a critical challenge facing policymakers, regulators, revenue authorities, and law enforcement. Once seen as a secondary issue compared to narcotics or counterfeit pharmaceuticals, illicit tobacco is now a clear and present threat for many countries across the globe.

A Lithuanian man has been arrested for trying to smuggle more than one million cigarettes into Poland after a road accident exposed the contraband concealed in his van.

In September, technical experts from the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat engaged with Chad government officials, parliamentarians, civil society organisations and other national stakeholders in a joint needs assessment to support the country’s implementation of the FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which it has been party to since 2018.

Brazil’s federal police recently pulled back the curtain on a criminal web that had infiltrated the country’s fuel distribution chains. While organised crime in Brazil has been expanding, for some time now, from drug and arms trafficking into biofuel and fossil fuels, the government is yet to take the lead on implementing a nationwide modern fuel traceability system.

Smurfit Westrock Security Concepts (SWSC), the Irish high-security printing and identity management solutions provider, has been awarded a contract by Revenue Commissioners (Revenue), Ireland, to provide 110-150 million unique identification codes per year for all tobacco related products imported and sold in the country.

Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) is making progress in safeguarding fuel integrity through a technology- driven strategy, according to local news site Citizen Digital.

In the June 2025 issue of Tax Stamp & Traceability News™, we reported that KPMG had released its ‘Illicit Cigarette Consumption in Europe’ report for 2024, commissioned by Philip Morris. Prompted by a later in-depth report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on the illicit cigarette trade in Hull, a port city on England’s North Sea coast, this article examines the situation in the UK as a whole.

Portugal has become the latest EU member state to officially oppose the European Commission’s proposed reforms to the Tobacco Excise Tax Directive (TED) – especially the one calling for a sharp increase in minimum tax rates. According to Portugal, this will drive consumers to the illicit market, reports The European Business Review.

In a long-awaited shift that signals growing legal acceptance of industrial hemp, German customs authorities have begun issuing official tax stamps for hemp flowers containing no detectable tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the psychoactive compound in cannabis that produces a ‘high’.