WA's tobacco black market hit with less than $89,000 in fines last year

Western Australian authorities have been slammed for handing out just $88,100 in fines for illegal tobacco last year.

Amid what police have described as increasing violence linked to the black market trade, the government yesterday announced plans to update legislation, including empowering authorities to close stores for up to 90 days.

Under the proposal, which is expected to be introduced to state parliament this week, the maximum penalty for individuals found with commercial quantities of illegal tobacco would also be increased from $20,000 to $4.2 million.

The largest penalty for businesses would rise from $80,000 to $21 million.

New figures from WA Health highlight the impact the currently low penalties are having on enforcement efforts, with officials handing out only 93 infringements across all of 2025 — an average of about eight each month.

The Health Department told the ABC the total value of those fines was $88,100.

For comparison, in the first four months of Queensland introducing increased penalties for commercial possession of illegal tobacco, 389 fines worth $19.7 million were handed out for that offence alone — more than 200 times WA's total for all offences for the year.

Fears crime syndicates unworried

Shadow Police Minister Adam Hort has been leading the WA opposition's push for stronger action against the illicit trade and described the figures as "trivial".

"I suspect these international crime syndicates are just going to pay it and keep doing business," he said.

Mr Hort said while the government's changes were welcome, he could not understand why they had taken so long — especially when states like South Australia and Queensland started increasing penalties in late 2024.

"It's not difficult to add a couple of zeroes to penalties in legislation," he said.

"I've been a parliamentarian now for 11 months. In any other industry, if there was a problem of this magnitude, you would be expected to act immediately.

"And sure, there may be more complex elements that needed to be addressed later on down the line, but we are talking about this issue having been in our community for years and getting worse and worse."

Those delays were due to the government not prioritising the legislation, he said — a suggestion cabinet ministers have repeatedly denied, saying the laws were complex and WA had waited to learn from the experience of other states.

Australian Council on Smoking and Health chief executive Laura Hunter agreed with Mr Hort, describing the figures as "disappointing".

"For too long, WA hasn't had the enforcement tools that are needed to properly disrupt this trade," she said.

While Ms Hunter also welcomed the government's proposed amendments, she cautioned that alone would not solve the problem.

"These laws need to be used to their full extent in order to protect the WA community."

WA Health doing 'everything' it can

In January the government appointed a senior WA Police officer to overhaul enforcement of the state's tobacco laws, which are the responsibility of WA Health.

That included $5 million to bolster the department's Tobacco Compliance Unit to 40 full-time equivalent staff.

Since being established in late November, WA Police's Taskforce Maverick has also been investigating the targeting of illicit tobacco and vape stores.

WA Police said yesterday 19 people had been charged with 65 offences as part of that work, including "dim-witted" teens who they allege had been duped into becoming foot soldiers for criminal networks behind the illegal trade.

They yesterday announced what Police Minister Reece Whitby described as the largest illegal tobacco seizure in the state's history, with 3.9 million cigarettes, 3,900 vapes and 288 kilograms of loose tobacco found in a Bayswater warehouse earlier this month.

Until the new laws are passed, a WA Health spokesperson said the department was doing "everything" it could to address the black market.

"Where selling of illicit tobacco is identified or suspected, WA Health will take appropriate action, no matter what the store or premises — we seize products and issue infringements," they said.

Call for broader focus on smoking

Despite the focus on enforcement, Deakin University criminology professor James Martin warned a broader focus was needed.

"While I think this is a necessary step, I think without addressing the root causes of the problem, which is very strong, consistent demand for nicotine and increasing restrictions on the legal supply of nicotine … these are largely reactive measures that are going to struggle to be effective," he said.

Dr Martin pointed to increasing smoking rates and authorities' challenges in tackling other drug trades as evidence that tougher enforcement alone would not be enough.

"Over the last 15 years we've tripled our drug law enforcement budget," he said.

"And law enforcement agencies have made good use of that money, they've produced record numbers of arrests, record volumes of seizures year-on-year. But the problem is that the impact on the market has actually been nil.

"Illicit drugs are just as readily available as they were 15 years ago … and we've actually seen street prices for every single major drug, illicit drug type, decrease over that time."

Preventative Health Minister Sabine Winton has indicated a willingness to consider what else the WA government could do to help people quit smoking as part of work on the state's first Preventative Health Strategy.

Dr Martin was more hopeful store closure orders could be effective in impacting the market, but said other states with those powers had already seen the black market move online in a bid to circumvent those restrictions.