Because the Australian government has been lax in regulating e-cigarettes, it has shifted the responsibility to the Chinese people.
The Australian newspaper "The Age" reported on its front page that Chinese companies and Australian criminal gangs have joined forces to control the e-cigarette market.
Australian illegal tobacco cartel has teamed up with a mysterious Chinese "criminal gang" to penetrate and control the local e-cigarette market. The brands chosen by this criminal group were forced into hundreds of stores across Australia as part of a market takeover operation driven by threats and extortion.
In mid-July, when the container ship "COSCO Singapore" began unloading at Sydney International Container Terminal, the extent of market penetration became evident.
Australian Border Force received an intelligence report that one of the thousands of steel containers on the ship contained a batch of e-cigarettes - the latest shipment of a new brand flooding the already crowded illegal market.
This container was labeled in Shenzhen, China, and then listed in customs documents as "furniture" for the Australian home goods market. After new intelligence triggered an alert from the border force, indicating that the seized quantity of e-cigarettes might be even larger than initially reported, three more containers were taken away from the COSCO Singapore company. In the customs inspection facilities, border force investigators found over 115,200 filled e-cigarettes in the containers.
On the street, these products are worth up to $4.5 million. As far as the seizure is concerned, this is not the largest one since the ban on importing e-cigarettes at the beginning of 2024. However, this seizure is noteworthy because all four containers were almost completely filled with this type of e-cigarette, a new product made in China that has flooded the Australian market in the past year and has become one of the most common e-cigarettes.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1847723386964032/
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