>>Weren't Vietnamese gangs shooting each other over smuggled cigarettes in
>>East Germany a couple of years back?
d^2 wrote:
>You might be right, and I also seem to remember that the counterfeit Marlboro
>and 555 business is indeed protected by guns. So maybe I'm applying a
>business-school model out of place. But I still think that the demand curve
>for tobacco is such that it's not going to be economic to sustain the kind of
>military infrastructure that crack and heroin do, or at least not in G7
>countries. Frankly, I'm surprised that marijuana is worth shooting someone
>over, although the history of Jamaica ought to have wised me up to that one.
My guess is that, if cigarettes were made illegal, their disappearance from the news stands would immediately become the source of a lot more panic and, consequently, violence and contraband income than marijuana, since people become much more heavily addicted to fags than to weed.
>dunno, never touch the ghastly things. My working man's Marlboros are £4.59 a
>pack (~=U$6.56). I dimly realise it is slightly tragic that I have been more
>loyal in my life to a particular mixture of floor-sweepings and asbestos
>than I
>have to three different women and about a dozen friends, but that's capitalism
>for you. I haven't changed my bank in the last ten years either.
By way of comparison my Marlboros cost me $9.60 Ozzie (which is currently at around 53 US cents) and $4.50 US in highly taxed NY (though they can be got for half that, i.e. tax free, via the internet from various Native American tribes), so it does look like we in the Colonies are getting a better deal on slow suicide than you Olde Countrie chappies.
cheers, Joanna S
www.overlookhouse.com