British smokers big buyers of cheap cigarettes

Twenty percent of British smokers get around the high cost of cigarettes by buying them at discount prices, according to a poll.

That compares with just 6 percent of Americans, 3.7 percent of Canadians and 1 percent of Australians.

Michael Cummings, of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York and an author of the survey, said cheap cigarettes may undermine the public health benefit of high taxes.

"The higher rates of low/untaxed purchases in the UK is likely a function of high cigarette prices that fuel unregulated cigarette resellers," he said.

Cigarettes cost about 5.20 pounds for 20 in Britain - about twice as much as in the United States. The charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) estimates that a 20-a-day smoker in Britain will spend about 1,800 pounds a year on cigarettes.

The telephone survey of nearly 9,000 smokers published online by the journal Tobacco Control also revealed that smokers with higher incomes tended to seek out bargain cigarettes on the Internet, from military bases and other outlets, more than those with lower salaries.

Cummings and his colleagues believe low rates of buying discount cigarettes seen in Australia are due to the country's relative isolation and national-level taxation policy.

"In Canada and the USA, cross-provincial state sales and low/untaxed cigarette purchases from Indian reservations that are unique to these nations contribute to this behaviour," Cummings added.