Smoking avatars and online games: how big tobacco targets young people in the metaverse
(www.theguardian.com)
The article specifically calls out advertising—how does 'smuggling' imply anything else? To smuggle here just means "to circumvent regulators." And yeah, I think it's appropriately terse.
You are reacting to what is, at worst, a bit of poetry. I don't understand why you're doing that.