The National Post is doing a 5 part series on tobacco in southwest Ontario and Quebec (h/t Pechanga). Part of the story involves the Six Nations, but in part 2 of the series, the focus turns to non-Indian tobacco growers.
Three months ago, a southwestern Ontario farmer reportedly sold 90,000 lbs. of raw-leaf tobacco, about a tenth of the crop produced on the area’s largest farms, to a shadowy buyer. The eye-popping, secret payment he pocketed in return was $1-million — in cash — close to five times the price he would have commanded on the legal market.
The customer, according to another grower familiar with the transaction, was the owner of a contraband cigarette factory, operating well outside the strictly regulated raw-tobacco marketing system. Although more akin to deals struck in the drug world and not always so large, such sales appear to be occurring with surprising frequency in Ontario’s tobacco belt. Reports have long suggested that the dozens of aboriginal-run cigarette plants in Canada and the United States are mostly supplied by raw tobacco smuggled from the southern states, or stolen from Canadian farms.
Sources in agriculture and the underground tobacco industry, however, say many Ontario farmers have been pulling in handsome sums selling — illegally — to the contraband industry.
And the description of Wednesday’s article:
All about Canada’s smuggling capital: Akwesasne Mohawk reserve, straddling the border with the U.S and perfect for trade in contraband. Yet Akwesasne’s smuggling origins lie with legal, big-tobacco companies, and smuggling’s resurgence in the last several years came despite urgent warnings from Mohawk leaders to the federal government.
Turtle Talk 