You walk into a Melbourne milkbar. Ask for cigarettes. The cashier nods, ducks behind the counter and slides out a box with actual branding - Marlboro reds.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s the black market. And it’s booming.

In a country that pioneered plain packaging and taxed cigarettes into oblivion, a strange thing is happening: branded cigarettes are making a comeback - through the back door. And people want them.

This episode is part II in my ongoing series around Vices, I’m calling it…

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The plain pack playbook

Let’s rewind to 2012. Australia rolled out the world’s first plain packaging laws for cigarettes. No logos. No colours. No finishes or textures. Just Pantone 448C (scientifically proven to be the world’s ugliest colour) and oversized pictures of diseased lungs.

But it worked. Smoking rates dropped. Brands lost their power. Packaging become anti-marketing. The pack wasn’t a billboard anymore, it was a warning label.

But in the shadows of that success, something else was brewing…

Black market boom

It’s reported that illicit tobacco now makes up one in every four cigarettes smoked in Australia. That within Victoria’s estimated 1,300 smoke shops, around 70% of them sell black market cigarettes.

In preparing for this article, I had a chat with some people behind the counter to understand how big the problem really was. They told me everyone buys the “cheap cigarettes”. That almost all of what they sell is under the table, black market products. 

With an average price around $50-$60 AUD a ‘legal’ pack, you can see why $15 cigarettes are appealing. 

It’s almost a $3 billion tax hole and counting. Driven by organised crime and cost-of-living pressure, the black market is no longer hidden - it’s right there in every independently run convenience store, milk bar and smoke shop. You simply just ask.

There are two types of “cheap cigarettes” available

Illicit whites like Manchester. Made legally overseas in areas like Dubai, then sold illegally here in Australia. Faux-premium branding - it’s not a brand that was ever actually sold here in Australia in the glory days.

Smuggled legacy brands like Marlboro and Camel, still featuring the logos and colours that were wiped off Australian shelves over a decade ago. They could be counterfeit or brought in from less-taxed areas like Indonesia.

The ghost of branding’s past

Despite a decade of plain packs, smokers still remember the old identities. The red Marlboro box still signals cool. A gold pack still feels premium.

Manchester has never advertised legally in Australia, but its branding has traction. Capturing the visual cues of the past and leveraging those signals.

When every legal option looks like a drab government warning, a smuggled branded box doesn’t just stand out, it seduces.

Vices and virtues

Here’s where it gets interesting.

While we debate whether branding plays a role in cigarettes or if it’s purely price, we can’t deny the emerging trend of “vice marketing” in other categories, but particularly water.

Maybe we can blame Liquid Death for bringing about a trend of edgy-brand-in-a-can but the launch of Natural Spirit water shows how brand owners are trying to tap into the signals of cigarette branding.

The pack design is almost identical to Marlboro. But they have even taken it a step further, with their advertising featuring the famous “Marlboro Man” and an almost word-for-word mimic of the copywriting.

Not Beer are following a similar playbook. Despite the fact that it explicitly says NOT Beer, they are acting suspiciously like beer.

I met these guys at Expo West a few weeks back and it’s a thing. They are not mucking around, this brand is building and gaining traction. And their marketing looks like a Bud Light commercial. Over the top, blokey and funny.

And it’s not just water.

The Neu Co is a supplement brand sold in brown prescription-style bottles. The products are mostly focused on skin + gut health, but the branding looks like a controlled substance.

Their marketing toes the line between high fashion and grungy nightclubs, creating a kind of designer narcotic aesthetic that blends a clinical feel with modern wellness.

You Can’t Regulate Desire

You can outlaw advertising. You can strip logos. You can choose the world’s ugliest colour.

But you can’t ban human nature.

Consumers still crave identity, story, a sense of belonging — even in their worst habits. Maybe especially in their worst habits.

The rise of black market cigs and the rise of sin-flavoured wellness products are two sides of the same coin.

Both are proof that branding, when done right, sticks. And when it’s banned, it doesn’t die. It just mutates.

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