Smoking

During a house search in the 21st district, the officers from the Vienna customs office found a total of 13 tons of tobacco and several machines for the production of cigarettes. According to a statement of the Ministry of Finance, the production was only under construction and had only been in operation for a short time. One person was arrested during the search.

The customs office estimates that around 52,000 cartons of cigarettes were produced, taken away and sold during the approximated ten weeks that the illegal factory has been active. According to the investigators this is "a highly profitable business, since the turnover to date amounts to at least 1.5 million euros on the black market".

The charity organisation Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) has surveyed 10,000 people in the United Kingdom between mid-April and mid-June about their smoking habits and calculated that an estimated amount of one million people have quit smoking since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since the surveying started over a decade ago quitting numbers have never been so high with 7,6% of the surveyed people giving up smoking in until June 2020.