Unseemly scrap over soggy cigarettes

People in Dorset, England, are being allowed by Border Agency staff to collect cigarette packs washed up on a beach, but are then having the cigarettes taken from them by the agency’s staff, according to a story by Samantha Harman for the Dorset Echo.

“We are letting them spend in some cases hours collecting the packets and we then intercept them up after all their hard work and relieve them of their cargo,” Harman quoted an unnamed agency staff member as saying.

The cigarettes apparently came from a container or containers washed from a ship as it crossed the channel in storms earlier this month.

About 11 million cigarettes were estimated to have been in the shipment, which was on its way from Rotterdam to Sri Lanka.

The caption of a picture of five people with plastic bags and a car that accompanied the story described those people as being police and agency staff with “hundreds of packets of cigarettes.”