The rise and rise of the roll-up - now Customs clamps down

Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson are partial to them, Johnny Depp has his with a hint of licorice, and Jeremy Irons can make one single-handed while driving. The common thread for this elite group of actors is that they all roll their own cigarettes.

Despite health warnings, their love of a DIY smoke is shared by a growing number of British people. One in four cigarettes consumed each year in the UK is a "roll-up".

The proportion of smokers who make their own has doubled from 11 per cent in 1990 to about a quarter today.

But with the growing popularity of hand rolling tobacco has come a new market for criminals. Just over half of all the roll-ups smoked in Britain are made with illegal tobacco. While customs officers have managed to significantly reduce cigarette smuggling, they are struggling to combat the boom in illicit rolling tobacco.

In order to get the problem under control, and to claw back some of the estimated £900m lost in unclaimed revenue every year, HM Revenue and Customs is about to deploy 200 extra officers to target the tobacco gangs. New laws that could see tobacco manufacturers fined up to £5m are also coming into force later in the year.

The vast bulk of illicit hand rolling tobacco is being brought in by crime gangs in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, where lower taxes mean it is far cheaper than in Britain.

The tobacco is smuggled in either by ferry passengers, or in batches of at least 100kg in heavy goods vehicles. Cheap air travel has meant that tobacco smuggling at airports has also increased.

Smugglers will go to great lengths to hide their goods. In Southampton last month, Revenue and Customs officers discovered 2.4 tons, enough for about 50,000 packets of tobacco, stuffed in the padding of kitchen stools that had been packed into 40ft containers.

Even selling the pouches of tobacco at discount prices to the public, the smugglers make from £1 to £3 profit for each pack.

"These people are serious organised criminals whose smuggling techniques are akin to those used by drug traffickers," explained Paul Gerrard, deputy head of the Enforcement and Compliance Operations at HM Revenue and Customs.

The gangs, which increasingly involve eastern European and Asian criminals, will sell the illicit goods on the street, in pubs, clubs, markets and car boot sales. Holloway Road in north London is a notorious strip for the sale of counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco.

The huge profits made by smugglers was illustrated in a court case in Scotland in August last year. Tariq Din, 45, was jailed for four years and was stripped of almost £2m in assets. Din and his highly organised gang smuggled in massive amounts of Golden Virginia rolling tobacco. Nicknamed the "King of the Roll-Ups", he had a team of drivers who would ferry cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco into Britain from Luxembourg.

The illicit market is dominated by a few brands, particularly Drum, Old Holborn and Golden Virginia, that have been manufactured in the UK, exported, and smuggled back to the country.

Smokers in the Midlands, the South-west and the North-west are the biggest consumers of roll-ups, with two out of every five "rollies" being smoked in those regions.

Stung by the hundreds of millions of pounds being lost in tax revenue, the Government has set HM Revenue and Customs new targets for reducing the illicit hand rolling tobacco market by 1,200 tons - about 20 per cent - by 2007-08.

The measures include 200 extra staff to work exclusively against the smuggling and selling of illicit rolling tobacco.

There are already 1,200 officers combating all forms of tobacco smuggling. New laws coming in later this year will fine tobacco manufactures up to £5m if they fail to control their supply chain. Manufacturers have also agreed not to over-sell tobacco to countries, so that criminals cannot buy up unwanted stock.