Australia’s tobacco wars are fuelling violence, with firebombings and arson attacks spanning the east coast.

Now the federal government wants to treat these organised crime syndicates like “drug lords” by going after them with wire tapping and seizing their assets.

And the tobacconists are in trouble too, with calls to ban tobacco stores and allow cigarettes to be sold only in supermarkets.

Today, criminologist Dr James Martin, from Deakin University, on how to reign in the multibillion-dollar black market that has created a gangsters’ paradise.

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