Unintended consequences

The U.K. has made it increasingly difficult to be a smoker. First retailers had to make cigs less accessible. The latest is that cigarette packaging must not reflect a brand. Everything must be plain brown. I doubt this will have an affect on smokers, but there it is. What it has helped is the gangs (former paramilitaries) that deal in counterfeit cigarettes. Big business here, apparently. And even bigger business now that they don't have to create fake packaging.

Fake diesel is also a big money maker for gangs. They take agricultural fuel and add something to it and sell it at a big mark up. I'm not sure of the chemical formulae involved, but apparently it's another thing keeping the gangs in business. I'm writing a paper on illegal dumping in Ireland--another way gangs make a lot of money. So we have our underbelly here too. I haven't heard of meth labs yet, but who knows? Gangs are the dark side of entrepreneurialism.
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