Arson and Deadly Feuds: Australia’s Tobacco Wars | Four Corners Documentary

Mar 3, 2025 | Four Corners investigative journalist Dan Oakes uncovers the secrets of Australia’s black-market tobacco trade in Tobacco Wars.

With illicit cigarettes readily available in cash-only stores and distributed by unmarked vans across the country, this investigation reveals a vast network stretching from Melbourne’s suburban tobacconists to international smuggling routes.

Using concealed cameras and exclusive access to law enforcement, the Four Corners team follows the illicit pipeline, exposing the lucrative industry that is fuelling organised crime while robbing the government of billions in lost revenue.

Tobacco Wars investigates the high-stakes underworld where arson attacks, extortion, and deadly feuds are used to control the illegal cigarette market.

As the government grapples with policy responses and law enforcement agencies struggle to disrupt smuggling syndicates, Tobacco Wars raises urgent questions about the country’s ability to curb this thriving illicit trade.


This is what you get when stupid, fanatical, anti-smoking politicians raise the price of cigarettes so much that smokers refuse to buy licit, government-regulated cigarettes because of extortionate prices and turn to much cheaper, black market cigarettes to enjoy a smoke. This is not good governance; rather, it is stupid, irresponsible governance. It doesn’t bring smoking rates down and it causes violence and gang warfare in the form of turf wars to boot. — © Mark Alexander

Here is an excellent NYT article related to this documentary.

How $40-a-Pack Cigarettes Pushed Australians to the Black Market

THE NEW YORK TIMES: ax hikes made cigarettes in Australia the most expensive in the world. They have also helped fuel a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise in bootleg tobacco.

Screenshot taken from this article. | Matthew Abbott for the New York Times
A retired math teacher descended into an underground parking lot in search of her dealer, cash in hand.

Headlights flashed from the far end of the garage in a beachside, middle-class neighborhood in suburban Melbourne, Australia. She walked up to an unmarked van and soon was back above ground with the illicit goods.

A carton of cigarettes.

Australia has the most expensive cigarettes in the world, a pack of midmarket cigarettes costing on average about 55 Australian dollars, or almost $40, nearly double what it will set you back in New York City. A series of steep tax hikes — eight in 10 years — were put in place to reduce the rate of smoking, which has steadily declined. But the high prices have also given rise to a thriving black market now estimated to be a multibillion-dollar industry that accounts for as much as half of all tobacco sales in the country.

“It’s the injustice of the situation,” said the retired teacher, Pat Felvus, 75, who recounted in an interview her early experiences of buying illegal cigarettes, which cost as little as 10 Australian dollars a pack. “Why would you pay four times the amount?”

Bootleg cigarettes are readily available on every main street in Australia — at convenience stores, candy shops and tobacconists. Competition has driven the price of under-the-counter smokes lower and lower, at a time that the cost for staples is rising. Violence has erupted between organized crime groups jostling for a slice of the lucrative market, with a spate of firebombings, extortion, shootings and homicides.

The scale of the black market and the criminality has raised questions about how far governments can raise so-called sin taxes to curb undesirable behaviors. Australia is now facing the quandary: Are the high cigarette prices doing more harm than good? » | Victoria Kim | Reporting from Geelong and Melbourne, Australia | Sunday, February 15, 2026

Gaggles of stupid politicians in parliaments around the world make stupid political decisions and thus make for stupid governance! Alas, you can’t fix stupid! — © Mark Alexander

Tobacco Wars - Episode One - Lighting Up; Episode Two - Smokescreen; Episode Three - Smoked Out

TOBACCO WARS is a comprehensive history of the cigarette, providing an in-depth, balanced, and often shocking look at the tobacco industry. The series' three one-hour episodes are organized chronologically, from the advent of the cigarette through its ascension to one of the most profitable consumer products the world has ever seen. Via first person accounts and insider documentation, TOBACCO WARS vividly portrays what the companies really knew about the link between smoking and disease, explains how mankind became seduced by such a dangerous product, provides a status report on Big Tobacco today, and looks towards the future of this most controversial of industries.