In France, where I have lived for a month now, the government has, at least legally, a monopoly on cigarette sales. This is nation wide. Only licensed “Tabac” stores are allowed to sell cigarettes.
A typical government cartel pack of smokes cost between 6.50 Euros ($8.84) for Winston’s and 7.00 Euros ($9.52) for Marlboro’s.
And the average French citizen just cant afford this.
So this has created a vibrant black market for cigarette sales in certain spots in Paris, in particular.
They are smuggled up from Egypt and Libya (where you can buy a pack for 70 cents american), floated north in boats to southern Italy and then driven up to Paris.
On the streets I buy a carton of Marlboro reds for 45 Euros (a little more than $6 american a pack). And I haven’t bought a bad pack of smokes here yet. They all have Arabic warning labels and in one case they had “Duty free Egypt” printed on them.
You just go to a metro station and wait for a guy to say “Marlboro”.
You then hold up your fingers indicating how many packs you want and then he holds up fingers indicating a per pack price.
If you agree you follow him and do the purchase while walking down the sidewalk.
It actually works out quite well.
It is estimated that 25% of all cigarette sales in Paris are transacted in this way.
I don’t see it so much anymore (the government probably cracked down), but a few years back in NJ I was getting all kinds of weird cigarettes (MArlboro Lights) - one with Cyrillic writing, one with Chinese, several with no stamp at all...
Many years ago (when a pack of cigarettes had reached $10 in NYC), my wife and I went to an Indian reservation near Niagara Falls NY and bought cartons for $22. This was in the same state as NYC at $10 per pack...
You cannot have a mafia/organized crime without government.