jimlongley wrote:When I was a kid my mother would drive from our home in upstate NY to Bennington, VT to buy her cigarettes. The NY State Police were aware of people doing this and would set up a "lemonade stand" just west of the border and stop everyone and ticket anyone whose cigarettes did not have a NY State tax stamp, even a single pack bought for personal consumption. My mother thought it was grossly unfair because of the amount of effort put forth, and gas she had to use, not to mention taking time out from her golf. I don't remember how many times she got ticketed, but I knew the one trooper by his first name ;).
My buddy's father drove truck for a NYS State company (Gorea?) and would make little trips into Canada and bring back hundreds of cartons. I don't know if he ever got caught.
I don't know what TX laws are like, but I would tread carefully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_ ... ted_States
When I lived in NYC back in the early to mid 1970s, cigarette trafficking was a profitable and active business of organized crime. I was a smoker back then, but I never bought my cigarettes anywhere other than the local smoke shop around the corner from me on 2nd Avenue, just above 83rd Street. Now, where
HE bought his inventory, I have no idea...... In 1978 (the same year I left New York), Congress passed the
Contraband Cigarette Trafficking Act of 1978, and it was last updated in 2012:
http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/18C114.txt.
According to the code:
Code: Select all
-HEAD-
Sec. 2341. Definitions
-STATUTE-
As used in this chapter -
(1) the term "cigarette" means -
(A) any roll of tobacco wrapped in paper or in any substance
not containing tobacco; and
(B) any roll of tobacco wrapped in any substance containing
tobacco which, because of its appearance, the type of tobacco
used in the filler, or its packaging and labeling, is likely to
be offered to, or purchased by, consumers as a cigarette
described in subparagraph (A);
(2) the term "contraband cigarettes" means a quantity in excess
of 10,000 cigarettes, which bear no evidence of the payment of
applicable State or local cigarette taxes in the State or
locality where such cigarettes are found......
Violation of the law is a felony act punishable by up to 5 years in prison, but you have to be found in possession of more than 10,000 cigarettes not bearing the tax stamp for the state in which you are in possession.
Clearly,
federal law cannot be used to prosecute someone from New York who goes to Vermont to buy a couple of cartons of cigarettes.
State law is another matter entirely, and I'm sure that NY is as bad as CA in that regard. They have a thing in Sacramento that poses as a legislature, and whose primary purpose seems to be to sit around and think of new ways to squeeze money out of the proles.
The libertarian in me says that all of these laws, state and local, are no different than any other drug control laws......which we know to be expensive to enforce,
difficult to enforce, have ZERO impact on the actual
use or the
distribution of the controlled substances, and the enforcement of which have probably more than any other single influence contributed to the erosion of the 4th Amendment. These laws serve merely to justify enormous bureaucracies at the state and federal level, and they are all about revenue; and they have had no impact at all on the public health. People still smoke. People still drink. People still use pot and heroin and methamphetamines. If we, as a nation, kill ourselves off with lung cancer and drug overdoses and cirrhosis of the liver, then that is what we as a nation deserve. NOBODY is putting a gun to anybody's head and forcing them to use these vile substances. It is nothing but weakness of character that makes us use these things (and I include myself in this accusation), and weakness of character has consequences—among which in this particular application are poverty, disease, addiction, and early death. I wish I had all the money back which I threw after these things when I was younger and less wise, and I wish that I did not have to worry for the damage I may have done to myself while I was using any of them.
Me, I'm an
EX drug user/cigarette smoker, and there are none so obnoxious as someone like me when we get on our soapboxes—but I speak the truth, and truth is inconveniently obnoxious sometimes. That doesn't ease the sorrow over loved ones lost to these terrible scourges. I miss my dad as much as anybody else misses a parent/sibling/child lost to cancer or alcoholism or drug overdose. But we only have ourselves to blame for the spiderweb of laws against these things, the loss of freedom therein, and for the terrible effects these things have upon our lives or the lives of our loved ones. I guess I'm wearing my pessimist underwear today.