What happens when three out of every four cigarettes sold in a country are illegal?
In this episode of Number of the Day, Francis Herd and Gareth Edwards examine the scale of South Africa’s illicit cigarette trade, now estimated at 75% of daily sales.
The conversation explores how illegal cigarettes undercut legitimate businesses, why British American Tobacco South Africa is shutting its local manufacturing operation after decades, and what this says about enforcement, state capacity, and lost tax revenue.
This is not a story about smoking.
It’s about how an illicit economy can overwhelm a legal one and what happens when the state fails to respond.
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