Obviously smurfing was a problem for Valorant from the start. This was their response in a Ask Valorant post from October 22nd 2020:

Smurfing is inevitable in ranked games, but I’m curious what you’re doing to discourage smurfs in VALORANT?

Smurfing always sucks, especially when you have rank on the line. While it’s hard to stop smurfing entirely in a free-to-play game, we are taking action to combat it. Right now we have a behind-the-scenes system for Unrated as well as one that applies to Iron through Diamond ranked players. The latter tracks an individual’s performance and notices when a player makes a highly disproportionate impact in a game. We then quickly boost them to harder matches and higher ranks in Competitive.

We stop leveraging this system for Immortal+ players because there isn't a ton of room to smurf or play down when you are already near the top ranks. Longer term, we’re also looking at ways to further accelerate placing smurfs into appropriately skilled matches. But right now we are prioritizing some improvements to our core rank system and leaderboards ahead of that.

—Ian Fielding, Senior Producer

(source)

Well, it's now more than one and a half years since that statement and as most of us across many different regions and ranks can tell, it's now worse than it has ever been.

On May 6th 2021 they devoted almost an entire blogpost on smurfs (note the "we should have an update for you all soon™ :^)" in regards to a replay system at the bottom for extra comedy lolwoaweos), stating:

For example, we’ve noticed that a big chunk of smurfs do so with no malicious intent—they’re trying to play competitively with friends outside of their rank.

[...]

We want to emphasize that this is one of the competitive team’s primary focuses at the moment, and although we are in the investigation phase, and it will take us some time to act on our findings, know that we are listening and agree that this is a problem worthy of heavy resources.—Jon Walker, Competitive Designer, and Sara Dadafshar, Producer(source)

To which many on this Subreddit rightfully responded with - if someone wants to play with their friend, but rank doesn't allow for it, why is the workaround -smurfing- then seen as not malicious? It's circumventing rules set to uphold the competitive integrity.They should be free to play in Unranked, but who is helped by a smurf and a low level player being allowed in competitive play other than those two players who both then play in ranks they don't belong in.Either way, stating that smurfing "is a problem worthy of heavy resources" acknowledges the gravity of the issue regardless of their other statement. So what has happened in the year and a month since?

We had one banwave of "accounts that were compromised and/or violated our Terms of Service", so accounts that were sold or hacked, on Nov 4th 2021. After that smurfing was again mentioned in the "Valorant Systems Health Series Intro" on Dec 15th 2021, where it's listed as:

Smurfs, or secondary accounts - We know, probably our most requested topic
(source)

Ever since then it's been radio silence. Not a single post or even tweet was posted about a topic they themselves deemed a primary focus more than a year ago and knew about from the start.