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Is there a black market cigarette industry?

I know snuggling them over the border from the US into Canada is, or at least was, a thing.

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Wow, I never would have guessed

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It's huge in the UK, not only are there illegal imports from Europe but there are "fake" cigarettes usually made from terrible cheap tobacco smuggled in from China and assembled here

Bare in mind our cigarettes are taxed insanely high. My gran smoked regal (probably the most expensive price bracket) and they were £14.12.

80% of that is tax I believe.

.50 cent for one single cigarette

They’d get cold otherwise.

I'm buying imported B&H menthol clicks for 6.50 a pack under the counter. I'm not the exception. You can get fake L&B for a fiver. Every other polish or corner shop sells import/knock-off cigs.

>"[...] contradicting claims made by the tobacco industry."

One of the least surprising results I've ever come across.

There certainly is in America. You can buy single cigarettes from smoke shops, gas stations, and random guys on the street. Our police choked a guy to death over it a few years ago. This might be a reasonable policy in other nations, but we know US cops will kill people over this. They’ve already done it.

For context, the stated reason why menthol cigarettes were banned in Canada is that menthol reduces throat irritation, which is believed to be a deterrent to smoking. A recent study found that between 2016 and 2018, menthol smokers were about 50% more likely to quit after the ban than non-menthol smokers (22% vs. 15%), so it does appear to have been at least somewhat successful.

If banning menthol cigarettes is good because menthol makes smoking less unpleasant, could mandating that irritants be added to cigarettes to make smoking even more unpleasant be the next step?