Kent cracks down on illegal tobacco trade with biggest operation yet
Abby Hook's been to the secret location where thousands of illegal cigarettes and vapes have been seized by Kent Trading Standards
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00:00Okay, so we're here in our secure property store, and I'll just show you what we've taken in the last couple of days
00:05Team we're out on a multi-operational job with
00:09other enforcement agencies and what you can see here and
00:12Here is the illegal tobacco that was seized from three premises in the morning. All of these goods were hidden
00:20So when you walk into a shop, you're not going to see these on display. These are hidden behind false walls and behind false doors
00:27Under sinks things like that
00:30And this one using a key card
00:35It's one of the biggest operations targeting the sale of illegal tobacco by Kent trading standards
00:40All this found in just five shops across Maidstone, Sittingbourne and Dover sniffed out by trained dogs
00:4710,000 pounds was seized as well as 163 vapes, 150,000 cigarettes, around 75 kilograms of hand-rolling tobacco, and 160 packets of shisha, all illegal
01:14And this isn't actually everything you found over those two days?
01:17No
01:18This is probably about a third of what we found
01:21Other agencies that we're working with have taken some of the other product that was found during those two days of operation
01:26You may actually recognize some of this packaging the logos the branding and a key thing here the colors now the tobacco
01:34Regulations says that all cigarettes have to be sold in that olive green packaging that we see in the shops
01:40But another key thing here that lets officers know that this is illegal is that some of the language on here some of the warnings are actually not even in English
01:50For legal reasons we can't identify the shops that were raided and we can't see for certain if they're even closed
01:57And it's because of the wider criminality involved in the illegal tobacco trade
02:02For a trading standards authority at the moment the legislation we have only allows us to seize the product
02:07We can then pursue inquiries. We can't
02:10Can't have the person arrested if there are other issues going on then the police could arrest people for other offenses
02:17While enforcement action is ongoing for the moment these products have been removed from the shelves
02:23Kept off the streets and taken out of the hands of criminal gangs
02:28Abbey hook for KMTV