9,800 IQOS were smuggled after 12 days visit abroad, worth nearly 8 million yuan
The biggest risk of new tobacco is lack of regulation
On July 22, Tsai Ing-wen returned to Taiwan after a 12-day visit but was exposed by Huang’s legislator of smuggling IQOS. Tsai’s accompanying security personnel smuggled more than 9,000 untaxed cigarettes using his special plane and customs clearance privileges.
Sources told that those special cartridges are suspected to include IQOS, a heat not burn device that has not yet been included in tobacco regulation by the Taiwan Regional Government, the quantity was gigantic.
However, the problem is that legislator Huang has been arguing with Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Health Services, which are responsible for the new tobacco regulatory agency, over the illegal detention of tobacco cartridges. He believes that “there is no support of law for the ban of heat not burn cartridges, and the custom has no right to detain them”, while the executive officials are “knowing the law and violating the law”, and are smuggling in large numbers of new tobacco products.
Related news: Taiwan’s Tsai apologizes for cigarette smuggling scandal
