Doug Bettcher mentions this use of electronic chips to track tobacco products and combat illicit trade in a interview with the Russian newspaper Gazeta.
Dr Bettcher: Every pack of cigarettes will be "stitched" with electronic information about the manufacturer, the production site and other identifying data. Information from all packs will be read by scanners installed on the assembly line, and it will be transmitted to the national authorities.
Gazeta.ru: What if the scanner is broken or intentionally broken?
Dr Bettcher: Then production stops. Such chips and electronic scanners are partially introduced in production in Turkey and Brazil. All the information on packs is considered by the Ministries of Finance of these countries.
Kenya plans to equip in this way the production of cigarettes. Moreover, Kenya has experience on chipping transit. It's a cute trick by tobacco companies - the goods are imported into the country ostensibly for the purpose of transit, but then disappear in the black market. Any tobacco products passing through Kenya are now marked with a special chip, electronic stamp, and information about each pack comes to authorities. Authorities are able to monitor the movement of tobacco products across the country, from border to border. If a truck with tobacco disappeared, and can not be tracked, then a special squad goes to the place of the last coordinates and finds out what happened to product.
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