Almost half the cigarettes smoked in Britain last year never paid a penny in tax — and Swansea is now one of the worst places in the country for illegal vapes.
Council officers in the city seized more than 48,000 illicit vapes, e-liquids and e-cigarettes in 2025, the fifth-largest haul of any local authority in Britain. Only Bolton, Cheshire East and Hillingdon pulled in more.
Across the UK, councils stripped more than 1.3 million illegal vaping products from shop shelves over the year. Swansea’s 48,220 put it firmly in the national top five.
But vapes are only half the trade. The same shops are pushing smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes — and the figures on those are even starker.
Analysis by KPMG, commissioned by tobacco giant Philip Morris International, claims 45% of all cigarettes consumed in the UK in 2025 were illicit — bought abroad, counterfeit or contraband. That is the highest level since records began.
The same industry-funded report reckons more than 10 billion illicit cigarettes were smoked in the UK last year, costing the Treasury over £4.46 billion in lost tax — enough, Philip Morris claims, to fund more than 95,000 police officers.
Those numbers come from a company with a direct stake in the crackdown, and should be read that way. But the “front shop” they describe is one south Wales knows well.
These are the outlets posing as grocers, vape shops, sweet shops, barbers or phone repair stores while selling illicit goods under the counter.
Swansea Trading Standards has been fighting them street by street. Last October a three-day blitz codenamed Operation Ceecee & Marvel — backed by police, HMRC, Home Office immigration officers and tobacco sniffer dogs — shut down nine vape shops across the city.
Officers made 11 arrests and seized five “stash cars.” They hauled out nearly 1,000 packs of counterfeit cigarettes and another 970 packets of illicit hand-rolling tobacco alongside thousands of illegal vapes.
One front shop on St Helen’s Road, Bob Marley Vapes, was still trading despite its registered owner being jailed over a £100,000 black-market cigarette and vape racket. Weeks later, magistrates extended the closure of eight of the shops.
Cigarettes have driven the most serious cases. One Swansea corner shop was raking in £1,200 a day selling counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco before two men were jailed.
Another Swansea man went to prison after police found thousands of counterfeit cigarettes and cash stuffed in his car.
The hauls keep getting bolder. One shopkeeper was jailed in January after officers dug a £45,000 stash of illegal vapes and tobacco out of secret compartments, a toilet panel and even his own bed.
In February, a Pontarddulais vape shop was shut for a second time over a £40,000 stockpile of illegal vapes and counterfeit tobacco.
Swansea Council has made the trade a priority. Cllr Andrew Williams, the authority’s cabinet member for corporate services, said when the shops were closed that Trading Standards had gathered intelligence on outlets selling illegal goods to consumers “including children.”
The action should send “a very strong message” that businesses have a duty to trade legally and not put consumers at risk, he said.
Philip Morris is using the figures to push for a tougher licensing regime. Peter Nixon, its UK managing director, said the data should be “a major wake-up call for the government,” with poorly resourced enforcement depriving the UK of almost £4.5 billion a year.
He said the past few years had been “a boon time for organised crime gangs who are selling illicit cigarettes and vapes with impunity, ruining our high streets and communities.”
Catherine Goger, the company’s illicit trade prevention manager, said it had expanded undercover teams gathering evidence in communities across the UK in its fight against the front shops.
The government needed to bring in “a robust licencing scheme as soon as possible” to drive illicit products off the high street, she said.
The row has now hit the Senedd floor. Reform Wales is demanding a crackdown on the criminal businesses it says are blighting Welsh high streets — premises used for money laundering, illicit tobacco and organised crime.
Jason O’Connell, Reform’s Shadow Minister for Economy and Transport and a Member of the Senedd, told the chamber that shops in his own constituency had sold illegal tobacco and vapes to children while displaying drug paraphernalia in the window. He said illegal shops “masquerading as legitimate businesses” were blighting high streets and undermining honest traders.
Responding for the new Plaid Cymru government, Economy Secretary Adam Price said a town-centre taskforce would be set up within his administration’s first 100 days, and that he would take good ideas on reviving high streets from any party in the chamber.
Anyone with information about the sale of illegal vapes or tobacco can report it to their local council’s Trading Standards team or to Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
