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The illicit trade of tobacco products, by enabling access to cheaper cigarettes, favors smoking initiation and hinders its cessation, minimizing the effects of price policy and taxes on reducing the demand for tobacco. This is especially the case among populations with lower income and schooling, where smoking is concentrated. Its confrontation requires multisectoral actions, aligned with the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, supported by estimates of the illicit trade magnitude and the analysis of its characteristics. This study analyzes, based on samples of household solid waste collected in 2018 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the conformity of discarded cigarette packages with criteria for their regular commercialization in Brazil, classifying them as legal or illegal. The evaluation was also carried out for the 15 Planning Areas (PA) of the municipality. The Social Progress Index (SPI) was chosen to represent heterogeneities among PA. The average percentage of illegal cigarette packs found was 26.79%, ranging from 3.36% to 46.29% among PA. The PAs with high illegality presented lower Social Progress Index and lower percentages of legal cigarette packages with a price equal to or greater than BRL 7.25. Among the illegal packages, 98.07% were manufactured in Paraguay. The study contributes methodologically to measure the consumption of illegal cigarettes in the second economic capital of Brazil, supporting the National Tobacco Control Policy in the struggle against illicit trade of tobacco products and in the effective implementation of the pricing and tax policy on these products.

The tobacco industry normally overestimates the illegal market's size in order to reinforce the idea of its direct relationship to the choice to increase taxes by the internal revenue administration. In Brazil, the last increase in taxes on tobacco products was in 2016. The growth of demand for illegal cigarettes has other macrosocial determinants that the industry does not take into account, such as the increase in the economic capacity to purchase legal cigarettes. The article aims to test the hypothesis of the "Brazilian consumer's economic reason" from 2015 to 2019 by comparing the estimated consumptions of illegal cigarettes, based on official government data on legal production and cigarette consumption with an "extraofficial estimate" furnished by the industry. The study also used official national data on monthly income from work. The Brazilian population's "purchasing capacity for legal cigarettes" increased systematically from 2016 to 2019, from 412 packs/month to 460 packs/month. The absolute difference between the estimate by the tobacco industry and the estimate based on official data on the volume of illegal cigarettes that were consumed increased over time, reaching +30.2 billion units in 2019. Meanwhile, legal cigarette consumption, calculated with official data, increased from 2016 through 2019 (+7.8 billion), while the industry estimated a reduction in this consumption (-9.5 billion). Policymakers should seek to base their decisions on estimates generated from official data sources, including macroeconomic data on employment and income, rather than to use estimates produced by the tobacco industry that aim to interfere in public policies.

Background: Paraguay has reportedly been a major transit hub for illicit tobacco products since the 1960s, initially to supply markets in Argentina and Brazil and, more recently, other regional markets and beyond. However, to date there has been no systematic analysis, notably independent of the tobacco industry, of this trade including the roles of domestic production and transnational tobacco companies (TTCs). This article fills that gap by detailing the history of Paraguay's illicit cigarette trade to Brazil and Argentina of TTC products and Paraguayan production between 1960 and 2003. The effective control of illicit cigarette flows, under Article 15 of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, requires fuller understanding of the changing nature of the illicit trade., Methods: We systematically searched internal industry documents to understand the activities and strategies of leading TTCs in Paraguay and subregion over time. We also mapped illicit trade volume and patterns using US government and UN data on the cigarette trade involving Paraguay. We then estimated Paraguay's cigarette production from 1989 to 2003 using tobacco leaf flows from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade)., Results: We identify four phases in the illicit tobacco trade involving Paraguay: 1) Paraguay as a transit hub to smuggle BAT and PMI cigarettes from the U.S. into Argentina and Brazil (from the 1960s to the mid-1970s); 2) BAT and PMI competing in north-east Argentina (1989-1994); 3) BAT and PMI competing in southern and southern-east Brazil (mid to late 1990s); and 4) the growth in the illicit trade of Paraguayan manufactured cigarettes (from the mid- 1990s onwards). These phases suggest the illicit trade was seeded by TTCs, and that the system of supply and demand on lower priced brands they developed in the 1990s created a business opportunity for manufacturing in Paraguay. Brazil's efforts to fight this trade, with a 150% tax on exports to Latin American countries in 1999, further prompted supply of the illicit trade to shift from TTCs to Paraguayan manufacturers., Conclusion: This paper extends evidence of the longstanding complicity of TTCs in the illicit trade to this region and the consequent growth of Paraguayan production in the 1990s. Our findings confirm the need to better understand the factors influencing how the illicit tobacco trade has changed over time, in specific regional contexts, and amid tobacco industry globalization. In Paraguay, the changing roles of TTC and domestic production have been central to shifting patterns of illicit supply and distribution since the 1960s. Important questions are raised, in turn, about TTCs efforts to participate as legitimate partners in global efforts to combat the problem, including a leading role in data gathering and analysis.

Background: Leading transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) began to expand their operations in Latin America in the 1960s. This included legally exporting their cigarettes to Paraguay during the 1960s which, in turn, were illegally re-exported to Argentina and Brazil. By the 1990s, competition between BAT and PMI for this lucrative illicit market, focusing on low-priced brands, prompted manufacturing in Paraguay. Paraguayan manufacturing rapidly grew after the introduction of a new cigarette export tax in Brazil in 1999., Methods: We systematically searched Truth Tobacco Industry Documents (TTID) to understand the activities and strategies of leading TTCs in Paraguay and subregion over time. We applied the analytical framework of Lee and Eckhardt (2017) to understand Tabesa's global business strategy. We searched the websites of TTCs and Tabesa for activities since the mid 2000s to understand how the companies publicly describe these strategies. We used the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) as an independent source to crosscheck statements by Tabesa executives about export markets. We contextualized and triangulated our findings with 42 key informant interviews., Results: Tabesa became the largest cigarette manufacturer in Paraguay, and one of the largest companies in the country, through complicity in the illicit trade. Enabled by market conditions created by leading TTCs, and a permissive regulatory environment in Paraguay, evidence suggests Tabesa had become a major source of illicit cigarettes across Latin America and beyond by the late 2000s. Although Brazil continues to account for the bulk of Tabesa's revenues, findings suggest that the company is aspiring to compete with TTCs in markets worldwide through legal and illegal sales., Conclusion: There is a need for fuller understanding of the risks to global tobacco control from local companies aspiring to compete with TTCs. The rise of Tabesa is part of the changing nature of the illicit trade in tobacco products which must be taken into account in implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and its Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. Potential conflicts of interest concerning Tabesa illustrate the importance of FCTC Article 5.3 on industry interference. There is also an urgent need to address the lack of independent and rigorous data on the illicit tobacco trade in the region.

Brazil has experienced a large decline in cigarette consumption in the last 25years. However, the most recent annual reports from the tobacco industry market leader in Brazil did not show a decrease in its gross profits. This is particularly important because tobacco industry donations/sponsorships come directly from the industry's reported gross-profits and are used to subvert health policies. The aim of the present study was to estimate (i) tobacco industry's gross-profit from legal cigarettes sales, and (ii) all-cause smoking-attributable deaths (SADs) among current Brazilian smokers who consumed legal cigarettes in 2013. We collected information on prevalence of legal cigarette use, cigarette consumption, price per cigarette pack among individuals aged ≥35years from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, legal cigarettes sales (e.g., average costs and total volume of sales) provided by the Federal Secretariat of Revenues, and population mortality from the available vital statistics. With a gross-profit of US$1.378 billion (1.307-1.434) from sales of 54.6 billion sticks of cigarettes (53.4-55.5) to 8,424,510 smokers aged 35years and older in Brazil in 2013, cumulative SADs were estimated at 96,012 (85,647-107,654) (around 34% of cumulative SADs also including current smoking of illegal cigarettes and past smoking), i.e., one SAD was equivalent to a gross-profit of US$14,352 (12,140-16,743). Our results revealed the association between sales of cigarettes, gross-profits, and deaths in Brazil. As tobacco industry donations/sponsorships originate from industry's gross profits, which, in turn, depend on cigarette sales, our findings may be useful for increasing "moral pressure" on individuals and institutions and help countries in stopping tobacco industry interference in health policies., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)