When I was stationed in Turkey in 1967-8, Marlboros were a hot item on the gray market. There were also counterfeit Marlboros out there. Pretty good packaging, but the cigarettes were typical Turkish tobacco. Horrible things. I don't know what the point was, except to get a higher price. A lot of Turks smoked Marlboros, and I suspect that a lot of them were fakes. It was a sort of status symbol, really.
You bet! Back in my smoking days I tried every cigarette imaginable. I tried all the American brands and a lot of the trendy European brands. In my opinion Marlboro was the best cigarette on the face of the earth. I don't think I (or any other committed smoker) could get burned more than once on the fake Marlboro's because I would recognize in a second that I wasn't smoking the real thing. Nobody is going to pay extra for Marlboros they know aren't real Marlboros.