[PittsburghAfterDark]

I want to know several things, note I'm not doubting the accuracy of this story.

1. How are North Koreans producing enough tobacco of sufficient quality to pass as Marlboros? North Korea isn't exactly the geographical equivilent of Virgina, Kentucky and the Carolinas. If tobacco doesn't thrive in places like Ohio, Illinois or Minnesota how can it thrive in North Korea?

2. My godparents son in law is a quality assurance supervisor for RJR and the way he's described their operation to me from a product manufacturing perspective I'm very impressed at how cigarettes are mass produced. It's not really that simple to produce two billion packs of smokes.

From printing the cartons and packs, yeah, that's easy to do. Producing cigarette paper, also not difficult. However when you throw in the quality of tobacco with mass market production? That can't be all that easy to replicate.

If all this tobacco is being grown in greenhouses imagine the resources that would be needed to be diverted from a construction, labor and resources standpoint.

It seems like they're spending far too much on the operation compared to the profits they can reap.

Same guy told me that RJR makes a carton of cigarettes for roughly $3.70 or 37 cents a pack. So how much are these knockoffs going for? You can still buy Marlboros in Eastern Europe for $1.something or less.

I don't see how this is tremendously profitable. Oh wait, I'm assuming they pay the workers making cigarettes anything.

LOL

[HiTech RedNeck]

Isn't NK/SK a jungle zone. Virtually anything grows there and overnight.

[Recon Dad]

I agree with you counterfeiting cigarettes is expensive. Phillip Morris makes their money because they are almost 100% automated and replace their equipment every few years.

circulating more than two billion packs a year worldwide from Taiwan to Belize, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Back in the mid 80's when our company was owned by Phillip Morris their three U.S. plants set a record and produced 1 Billion units in a single day. So 2 Billion is weak.

[Junior]

You're assuming the North Koreans grow their own tobacco. They could import it from any number of countries, including some the Arab countries they are so cozy with.

[SampleMan]

They buy the tobacco.

They don't care about the quality.

They counterfeit tax stamps and sell the cigs at a high profit margin. Many countries have even higher taxes than we do.

[Drew68]

You can still buy Marlboros in Eastern Europe for $1.something or less.

When I was in Europe recently and in the Middle East in 2004 I smoked Marlboro Reds (as my preferred brand of Marlboro Medium 100s were hard to come by). In both cases they looked like regular Marlboros except that the "Kings" were sold in a hard pack and they were a little longer than hard pack Marlboros stateside. They were as long and had the same length filter as soft pack Marlboros here. They were also just a little lighter in taste.

I noticed that in both cases these Marlboros were licensed from a distributor in Switzerland.

After smoking these "Reds" for six months I grew to like them. Upon returning to the States I purchased a hard pack of Marlboro Reds and practically choked on my first puff they were so strong!

I also liked the price. $10/carton in Dubai and about $0.70/pack in Ukraine.