Flavoured, non-cigarette tobacco for sale in the USA: an inventory analysis of Internet retailers.

cantly lower than the Euromonitor estimates suggest. Euromonitor states the source of its illicit trade estimates as “official statistics, trade associations, trade press, trade interviews, [and] Euromonitor International estimates”. However, the methodology and sources used by Euromonitor are not well-documented, and the discrepancies across editions call into serious question the sources of data and methodology used to derive them. Euromonitor’s reliance on tobacco industry intelligence and an opaque modelling process may lead to biased estimates, especially if information provided by industry sources is influenced by their common narrative that increases in excise taxes cause increases in illicit trade. 7 We recommend that investigators exercise increased caution in using Euromonitor data for studies on illicit trade and that new well-documented and verifiable methods are developed to monitor illicit trade that are not dependent on industry data.