A Trading Standards Officer is shown navigating among the debris, his torch flickering back and forth in the shadows until it lands on a secret cache of thousands of illicit cigarettes. This is only one of many bizarre encounters while looking into the illegal cigarette sales in Hull. We saw smuggled and counterfeit tobacco being sold in main street mini-marts on many occasions throughout a single week. When we attempted to record the sales, store employees intimidated us and seized our cameras.
All around Britain, this narrative is now being told again and again. Hundreds of high street companies were searched by the National criminal Agency (NCA) in April; many of these were thought to be supplied by international criminal groups. Additionally, Trading Standards teams have discovered a flourishing illegal tobacco trade.
The networks that sell illicit cigarettes are the “golden thread for understanding serious organised crime,” according to a renowned criminology specialist, because of their connections to illegal immigration and people trafficking.
Thus, in a sense, these high street stores relate to the different internal issues that Britain is currently dealing with. Our main streets are becoming emblems of our country’s decline, according to political scholars, and this is also eroding public confidence in the government and the police.
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