Just like cigarettes in New York, if the legal product is expensive from taxes, then the illegal market will still be significant.
https://www.vice.com/read/i-spent-a-day-with-a-guy-selling-illegal-cigarettes-on-the-streets-of-nyc-1023
I Spent a Day with a Guy Selling Illegal Cigarettes on the Streets of New York
October 23, 2014
by Solange Uwimana
It's a cloudy and cool September morning on Staten Island when I make my way to Bay Street looking for someone to sell me illegal cigarettes. I don't smoke, but ever since Eric Garner's haunting death here a few months ago after the police approached him for selling "loosies"-individual, untaxed cigarettes-I've wanted to know how easy it is to find someone who will sell me illegal smokes on the street.
~ snip ~
Lato is unhurried and nonchalant as he sells Newps to a dozen or so people on the street in the hour we stand there talking. Newport was the second-best selling brand of cigarettes nationwide behind Marlboro in 2013. It's also the only brand Lato is selling this morning.
~ snip ~
"Everybody on Staten know that Bay Street right here is the market for cigarettes," he tells me. "Everybody on Staten Island know if you want to pay $8 for a pack of cigarettes, go to Bay Street. Any place else is $9 and better."
That's an amazing deal in a town where the average price of a pack of smokes is somewhere around $13. I've seen them listed for as low as $11 in Harlem and as high as $15 in Midtown. Those prices include the state excise tax of $4.35, as well as the city's local tax of $1.50. That makes New York the most expensive state in which to buy cigarettes.
~ snip ~
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