The Biggest Tobacco Bust in Queensland History Proves One Thing: Prohibition Breeds Crime

By Alan Gor

31 August 2025

This week, the headlines shouted “historic bust.” Thirty million cigarettes. Nearly 400,000 vapes. Tons of loose tobacco. Over a million dollars in cash. All were seized in a blitz of raids across Brisbane’s north.

It looked like a law enforcement blockbuster: Border Force officers hauling crates, police parading their finds, politicians lining up for photo ops. Acting Premier Jarrod Bleijie declared it “proof” the government was winning the war on illicit tobacco and vaping.

But scratch the surface and the truth looks very different. This was not a victory. It was Exhibit A in the case against Australia’s failing prohibitionist policies.

Prohibition by Policy

Australia’s tobacco control strategy has long relied on two levers: ever-rising cigarette taxes and, more recently, a blanket ban on vaping products outside a narrow prescription scheme that few adults can access.

The logic was simple: make smoking too expensive to sustain, and block vaping altogether to prevent uptake. In theory, demand would collapse.

In reality, demand didn’t disappear. It just went elsewhere.

• Cigarettes now sell for $50+ per pack, the highest retail price anywhere in the world.

• Vapes are banned outright, so every one on the shelf has been smuggled.

• Consumers — whether addicted smokers, price-conscious families, or young people experimenting — still want them.

This is the classic recipe for a black market:

1. Restrict the supply of a high-demand product.

2. Consumers look for alternatives.

3. Criminal networks step in to profit.

Australia hasn’t eliminated smoking or vaping. It has simply transferred billions of dollars in trade from licensed retailers into the hands of organised crime.

The Economics of Illicit Supply

The Queensland bust was valued at nearly $75 million — $53.8 million in tobacco duty lost, plus $20 million in vape sales. And that’s just one operation, in one state, over one week.

Multiply that out across the country and across the year, and the figures spiral into the billions.

This is not the footprint of a fringe trade. It is the mark of a thriving shadow economy — one so lucrative that entire syndicates now exist solely to service it.

Authorities like to frame seizures as a “dent” in criminal activity. In truth, each raid is a minor bump in a vast and resilient supply chain. For organised crime, shipments being confiscated are just a cost of doing business. If anything, every seizure reduces supply and pushes up street prices, making the next shipment even more profitable.

Politicians Pretend, Criminals Profit

After the Queensland operation, Acting Premier Bleijie congratulated police and border officials, framing the bust as proof that government crackdowns are working.

The reality? It proves the exact opposite.

• If the black market were shrinking, operations of this scale wouldn’t exist.

• If demand were collapsing, there wouldn’t be $75 million worth of contraband shifting through a single city in a single week.

• If prohibition worked, crime syndicates wouldn’t be laughing all the way to the bank.

Every smiling photo op, every triumphant press release, is really an admission of failure. The bigger the bust, the clearer the evidence that prohibition has turbocharged organised crime rather than suppressing it.

The Global Lesson: Prohibition Always Fails

Australia’s predicament is not new. History is full of examples where governments tried to legislate demand out of existence.

• Alcohol Prohibition in the US (1920s): Rather than eradicating drinking, it created the golden age of organised crime, enriching bootleggers like Al Capone.

• The War on Drugs: Despite trillions spent globally, demand for narcotics persists and cartels thrive.

• Tobacco today: Wherever excise rates soar beyond affordability, black markets grow.

In the UK, household spending on tobacco has hit £22 billion a year, but HMRC only collects £8.4 billion in duty. That’s a £14 billion gap, evidence that illicit supply is filling demand. In Ireland, excise revenues have declined despite record prices. New Zealand has even halted planned tax hikes after acknowledging the risk of fuelling illicit trade.

Australia is not an outlier. It is simply the latest chapter in a century-long saga: prohibition breeds crime.

Who Really Pays the Price?

Governments like to present these busts as victories for public health and law enforcement. But who actually benefits, and who loses?

• Winners:

  • Organised crime syndicates, which enjoy monopoly control of a vast untaxed market.

  • Corrupt networks that launder illicit profits through property, cars, and luxury goods.

  
  

• Losers:

  • Smokers, forced to choose between unaffordable legal packs or risky illicit ones.

  • Vapers, denied access to regulated alternatives that could reduce harm.

  • Legitimate retailers, who lose customers to backdoor suppliers.

  • The taxpayer, as billions in potential revenue vanish into the black market.

  
  

And perhaps the biggest loser of all: public health. When vapes are driven underground, quality control disappears. When cigarettes are smuggled, underage access becomes easier, not harder.

The Political Illusion of Control

So why do governments persist with policies that so obviously fail? Partly it’s inertia: politicians fear being painted as “soft” if they question prohibition. Partly it’s revenue dependency: tobacco excise remains one of the single largest streams of government tax.

And partly it’s the optics. Every time a major bust is staged, politicians get to stand in front of the cameras and look tough. The short-term photo opportunity outweighs the long-term recognition that the system itself is broken.

But behind the podiums, the fundamentals don’t change: demand persists, supply adapts, and crime syndicates grow richer.

A Smarter Way Forward

If Australia truly wanted to dismantle the black market, the solution wouldn’t be more raids and seizures. It would be a structural reform.

1. Regulated legal supply: Cigarettes priced to undercut illicit trade. Vapes are legally available to adults under a regulated framework.

2. Consumer access: Affordable harm-reduction products, rather than forcing smokers into either unaffordable packs or criminal supply chains.

3. Targeted enforcement: Focus on violent crime and trafficking, not on policing consumer behaviour.

4. Tax policy balance: Revenue collection that sustains public health funding without making contraband irresistibly profitable.

Prohibition creates crime. Regulation dismantles it.

The Real Milestone

The Queensland bust is not evidence of victory. It is a milestone on the road to failure. The bigger the seizures, the clearer the scale of the shadow economy created by government policy.

Australia now stands at a crossroads. It can continue doubling down on prohibition, fuelling organised crime while congratulating itself on “historic busts.” Or it can learn from history, from its peers overseas, and from the simple reality that demand will not disappear.

The choice is stark. Keep playing Prohibition-era whack-a-mole with criminal syndicates. Or end the cycle by offering adults regulated, affordable, legal alternatives.

Until then, every “record haul” is not a win. It’s proof that prohibition is the greatest gift organised crime has ever received.