Will O’Reilly

In the UK, the tobacco industry has employed the tactic of using ex-police officers in its campaigns against the introduction of tobacco control regulations, including the Point of Sale Display Ban and plain packaging. See Third Party Techniques and Hiring Independent Experts for more on this tactic.

Working for Philip Morris International

Since late 2011, Will O’Reilly, former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, has repeatedly appeared in the media as an expert working for Philip Morris International (PMI) tackling tobacco smuggling.

In 2025, Philip Morris Limited described O’Reilly as an “external consultant and undercover operator” working with the company.¹ In June 2026, after the UK Tobacco and Vapes Bill became law, O’Reilly led a team of former undercover police officers paid by PMI to investigate retailers selling illegal tobacco products and e-cigarettes in Manchester, passing its evidence to Trading Standards officers.²

See below for details of his activities around the introduction of plain packaging regulations in the UK.

“Media Messenger” on plain packaging

In 2013, leaked internal tobacco industry documents and presentations revealed the extent of PMI’s anti-plain packaging campaign in the UK during the previous year. For details see:

• PMI’s Anti-Plain Packaging Lobbying Campaign
• PMI’s Anti-PP Media Campaign

O’Reilly is a director, of a UK company called WOR Consultancy Limited.³

“WOR” was listed as one of PMI’s “media messengers” (Image 1), indicating that O’Reilly was an integral part of the company’s anti-plain packaging public relations campaign. However, media articles at this time, did not always mention that O’Reilly worked for a tobacco company.⁴⁵⁶⁷

Active In Scotland

After the Scottish government announced in September 2013 that it would proceed with plain packaging, O’Reilly appeared in Scottish media scaremongering about tobacco smuggling.^89101112

For more details see:

• Scotland Plain Packaging: Scaremongering over Illicit Tobacco

Investigations in Australia and Ireland

In his submission to the UK Government’s Independent Review into Plain Packaging undertaken by Sir Cyril Chantler,¹³ O’Reilly wrote:

“Since 2011 my role as a consultant for Philip Morris International has been to conduct extensive research into the illicit trade in tobacco products and to act as a spokesperson on the subject. I have studied the illicit trade across the UK including separate projects in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland … More recently I travelled to Australia to gain an insight of the situation there since the introduction of standardised packaging or plain packaging (PP) for tobacco products.”¹⁴

Other ex-policemen with links to the tobacco industry

• Peter Sheridan – Former Assistant Chief Constable and Head of Organised Crime and Murder Investigation
• Roy Ramm – Former Commander of Specialist Operations at New Scotland Yard

Tobacco Tactics Resources

• Third Party Techniques
• Hiring Independent Experts
• (APPG) on illicit trade

TCRG Research

The following study provides details on how the tobacco industry has manipulated media coverage of the illicit tobacco trade in the UK and over-estimated the size of the illicit market:

• Tobacco industry manipulation of data on and press coverage of the illicit tobacco trade in the UK, A. Rowell, K. Evans-Reeves, A. Gilmore, 2014, Tobacco Control, 23(e1), e35-e43, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2013-051397

Visit Tobacco Control Research Group: Peer-Reviewed Research for a full list of our journal articles of tobacco industry influence on public health policies.