A town centre convenience store is selling cheap tobacco illegally with people queuing up for their supplies, KentOnline can reveal.

Numerous smoking products with prices slashed almost in half were offered to our reporter at Euro Market in Folkestone.

Illicit tobacco helps enable children to smoke, brings crime into communities, undermines competitors and dodges tax.

The fraud costs taxpayers an estimated £2.2 billion a year, depriving the country of revenue needed elsewhere, official figures show.

Signage on the Guildhall Street store advertises “Asian and East European food and drinks”, an LED display flashes opening times.

A large poster showing pictures of international food, drinks and condiments stuck up in the window blocks any kind of view from outside.

Inside, the counters are lined with shisha pipes and typical food-stuff - flatbreads, jarred vegetables and biscuits, for example.

Wearing a face mask, the shopkeeper is protected by a large perspex screen, as any typical shop worker should be. But that’s where normality ends.

Asked for tobacco, the worker said it would be “foreign”, about £9 cheaper than its English equivalent and the choice of brands were numerous.

He explained if we recommended a friend we could get future discounts.

During two minutes inside the store, while our reporter waited for the order to emerge, four more punters patiently queued before ordering their contraband.

KentOnline bought 50 grams of Golden Virginia and Amber Leaf for £34 for analysis.

Under UK law, tobacco packaging must be a dark drab brown with sufficient health warnings and the ‘UK Duty Paid’ label clearly visible.

But neither package contains the label and both advertise headquarters in Belgium. The Golden Virginia wrapper is also an illegal and lighter shade of green.

There are various types of dangerous and unregulated - so there is no way of knowing what harmful ingredients they contain - illegal tobacco circulating the UK.

Illicit whites are mass-manufactured to be illegally imported and sold without duty being paid.

They often lack the ability to self-extinguish if left unsmoked, posing a fire risk - legal cigarettes have a safety feature to help them self-extinguish to reduce risk.

The KentOnline probe comes as police battle the multi-billion pound industry sweeping across Kent which has been linked to helping fund more serious crime.

Last month, thousands of illegal cigarettes were seized at a shop in Gravesend and, just a couple of days before that, a huge haul of cigarettes was found in the boot of an uninsured car in Medway.

In November, more than 70,000 illegal cigarettes, tobacco and cash were seized following two raids on shops in Chatham.

Trading Standards services have been hit hard by austerity and huge budget cuts since 2016, helping illicit traders to flourish.

Budgets were slashed by up to 60 per cent between 2010 and 2018 meaning staff are more thinly spread.

Now, about 11% of cigarettes and 49% of hand rolling tobacco consumed in the UK is illicit, whether smuggled, counterfeit, stolen or bootlegged, official figures show.

Japan Tobacco International, which supplies Amber Leaf, said lockdown had not adversely impacted the illegal trade and called on Trading Standards to investigate the matter.

Ian Howell, the firm's regulation manager, said: "KentOnline's investigation has highlighted the continued availability of illegal tobacco products in the region, which is also replicated across the country.

"The Government estimates that, since 2000, over £47 billion in tax revenue has been lost through sales of illegal tobacco products and this, of course, fails to take account of the wider detrimental impact on local communities of the criminality that underpins this trade.

"The illegal trade does not appear to have been adversely affected by lockdowns or movement restrictions and this remains a serious problem.

"Retailers who sell illegal tobacco damage the sales of legitimate business and we hope that Trading Standards will follow up on the findings of KentOnline's investigation."

"JTI is committed to helping tackle the problem of illegal tobacco and we take a no-nonsense approach when it comes to this issue."

He continued: "We have removed gantries from 43 retailers who have been convicted of selling illegal tobacco and we will continue to take action with the relevant authorities as and when needed.

"Retailers who sell illegal tobacco damage the sales of legitimate business and we hope that Trading Standards will follow up on the findings of KentOnline's investigation."

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute was approached for a comment.

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