The $7 billion crime industry. The excise rate that built it. The health department that knew — and kept raising the tax anyway. The global protocol to combat illicit tobacco that 100 countries signed, and Australia quietly ignored. The enforcement agency with no enforcement powers, led by someone with no law enforcement experience. The smoking rate data that nobody's measuring — or maybe nobody wants to see.

The thing is — some of this is documented. Australia's illicit tobacco market, once a niche customs headache, now accounts for an estimated 75–80% of all tobacco consumed in the country. Firebombings have terrorised suburban shopfronts. Legitimate small businesses can't get insurance.

So how did a public health policy designed to stop people smoking end up creating the largest organised crime industry this country has ever seen?

In this episode, Richard Baker and Dr. Nick Coatsworth are joined by Rohan Pike — former AFP, foreign bribery investigator, and the man who's been shouting about illicit tobacco since before most people knew it was a problem — to ask how we got here, who knew what and when, and why the response still doesn't match the scale of the crisis.

• How Australia's world-leading tobacco excise created a world-leading criminal market — and when the warning signs were first visible to law enforcement
• The health department's role in suppressing those warnings — and the theory that a single-minded focus on one public health metric blinded policymakers to everything else
• The firebombings, the organised crime turf wars, and the name every Australian now knows: how illicit tobacco went from a customs problem to a national security issue
• The global protocol on illicit tobacco that Australia never signed — and what that decision looks like in hindsight
• The harm reduction debate: what the UK and New Zealand are doing with vapes and nicotine pouches, why Australia is moving in the opposite direction, and whether the real enemy is smoking or nicotine itself
• What it would actually take to claw back control of the market — and whether it's already too late

Some of this is policy failure. Some of it looks like wilful blindness. And almost none of it is as complicated as the people responsible want you to believe.

Join Rich Baker and Dr Nick Coatsworth as they suss it all out.

Contact the show at [email protected].

Contact the show at [email protected]

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