{"id":614896,"date":"2026-09-29T02:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T02:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614896\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T02:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T02:12:12","slug":"tobacco-smugglers-could-be-jailed-for-7-years-as-new-fines-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/614896\/","title":{"rendered":"Tobacco smugglers could be jailed for 7 years as new fines revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tobacco smugglers could face up to seven years in prison, with the Government announcing a series of new fines and offences in its effort to stub out the black market. <\/p>\n

An amendment bill introduced to Parliament last week will increase the maximum prison term for tobacco smuggling<\/a> and excise evasion from six months to seven years. <\/p>\n

Today, the Government said it would also introduce new offences targeting the sale of tobacco that does not meet New Zealand’s packaging regulations. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnlawful packaging of tobacco is a clear indicator that tobacco has been illicitly imported,\u201d Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said.<\/p>\n

In New Zealand, cigarette and other tobacco packaging must include pictures and health warnings, with company marketing imagery removed \u2013 illicit tobacco often lacks these features. <\/p>\n

The new penalties included a $2000 fine for breaching packaging regulations and a “strict” liability offence for breaching packaging regulations of up to $200,000 for manufacturers, importers, and distributors. <\/p>\n

The maximum penalty for an existing knowledge-based offence for breaching packaging regulations will increase from $50,000 to $100,000. <\/p>\n

\"Associate<\/p>\n

Associate Health Minister Casey Costello. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

The offence structure and maximum penalties for selling small quantities of tobacco will be aligned with those for packaging. <\/p>\n

Consequences will be strengthened for the approval of a specialist vape retailer that breaches regulations.<\/p>\n

Costello said the new fines and offences will be introduced through amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990. <\/p>\n

\u201cCheap illegal cigarettes are connected to organised crime; they hit legitimate businesses and tax revenue \u2013 and they undermine our efforts to stop people smoking,\u201d Costello said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current regulatory regime stretches across various agencies and doesn\u2019t recognise the seriousness of the issue or provide enforcement agencies the tools required.”<\/p>\n

She said Customs had seized 12 million cigarettes<\/a> and 1.7 tonnes of loose tobacco at the border between January and September 1. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe annual increase in the tobacco excise has been a useful tool to discourage smoking, as well as providing important government revenue. Australia\u2019s experience with a huge slump in excise collection connected to illicit tobacco shows that we need to stop this black market as soon as we can,\u201d Costello said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaken together, these changes will strengthen the Government\u2019s cross-agency response by making it easier to identify, disrupt and penalise illicit activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including the Greens riding high off our latest poll, and Nathan Cleary’s response to a horror injury. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tobacco smugglers could face up to seven years in prison, with the Government announcing a series of new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[67,134,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-614896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}