[cbrauchli]

Hmm. It's tough to say. I see what you mean now. Food is one thing, because it doesn't carry the negative stigma that drug use does here. The US is also extremely friendly towards obesity, from what I see. Obese people do not undergo anywhere near the same amount of humiliation as they would elsewhere. You're completely right though that the food culture in the US is one of absurd excess. I'm just not sure that excess would carry over to drugs.

Re: cigarettes, they're actually smoked much less than in Europe, despite being cheaper and having less graphic warnings. Alcohol is certainly consumed differently as well, but most people grow up and stop binge drinking past a certain age.

I don't really know about the cigarette smuggling you're talking about, so I won't comment on that. If you can point me to an article about it, I'd be interested to read more. I do find it hard to believe that it's had the same effect on communities as drug trafficking in Northern Mexico.

[dhughes]

It seems the majority of cigarette smuggling goes on at the Quebec/NY border. The two big players involved are the Rock Machine/Hells Angels (Bandidos and Bacchus) and Mohawk Natives who reside in the border region.

There is also quite a bit in eastern Quebec and New Brunswick , it's into the remainder of Maritimes the border really where a lot of this occurs.

CBC.ca has news of it from time to time mostly when violence erupts, a lot of it occurred in the 90s when the Rock Machine and Hells Angels were separate club but I think they merged, violently.

Of the regions involved all are areas of high rates of smoking. Even here where I live where the federal tax centre building is the local news found illegal unmarked cigarettes outside the smoking area! Imagine if in the US the IRS workers on their smoke break smoked illegal cigarettes and just put them out on the ground, ballsy!

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mohawks+gangs+tobacco/14...

(PDF) http://www.cisc.gc.ca/annual_reports/documents/2001_annual_r...