Estimating the Size of Illicit Tobacco Market in Lithuania: Results from the Discarded Pack Collection Method

Abstract

Introduction: For decades in Lithuania, the threat of illicit trade has been used to weaken evidence-based tobacco-control policies and to undermine efforts to reduce smoking prevalence and its attributable burden, while also depriving the government of much-needed tax revenue. The aim of this study is to estimate the size of the illicit cigarette market in Lithuania using data from a nationally representative discarded pack collection.

Aims and methods: The study employed a two-stage cluster design by first randomly selecting 65 well-defined population settlements (30 cities and 35 townships), representing both urban and rural areas, in all 10 counties in Lithuania. Next, we randomly selected 358 polling districts within these settlements. Each polling district had one route along which discarded packs were collected between September 2019 and 2020.

Results: In total, 28.9% (95% CIs = 27.7 to 30.1) of discarded cigarette packs were classified as illicit. The vast majority (90.1%) of illicit packs originated from Belarus with most (86.9%) packs produced in the Grodno Tobacco Factory Neman. Tax stamps were present on 93.6% of legal packs and also on 76% of illegal packs.

Conclusions: Data from this study suggest that the illicit cigarette trade in Lithuania is more widespread than indicated by other methods and primarily supplied by the neighboring Belarus state-owned tobacco factory in Grodno. This signals the need to adopt Belarus-specific border control and security measures.

Implications: This study presents data from the first national industry-independent study on illicit tobacco trade in Lithuania using discarded cigarette pack collection method. As customs seizure data show, our results also indicate that the illicit cigarette market is primarily supplied by Belarus state-owned Grodno Tobacco Factory Neman known for filling Europe with cheap cigarettes. An estimate derived from this study is higher than both the industry-independent estimate obtained by the survey method and the estimates offered by the tobacco industry. This adds to the evidence that the difference in estimates obtained by different methods reflects the strengths and weaknesses of each. The study also demonstrates the impact of a rogue neighbor on the illicit market in an adjacent country and offers suggestions on how to address it.