Canada’s underground tobacco industry

[Stalebread]

I've read only the first of this five-part newspaper series but it looks to be pretty interesting.

Here's the LINK

National Post Staff September 18, 2010 – 9:16 am by Tom Blackwell

They’re surrounded by high fences, security guards and a general air of secrecy; rarely is there any identifying sign. The factories at the heart of Canada’s surprising underground tobacco industry are scattered secretively through four Ontario and Quebec aboriginal communities, operating with virtual impunity and churning out so many cheap, tax-free cigarettes, some critics believe they have brought to a halt a decades-long decline in smoking rates. Yet those plants have also given an entrepreneurial, free-market jolt to depressed native economies, creating boom towns and cigarette mansions. Starting on Saturday, a five-part National Post series will take readers inside the Mohawk-dominated contraband business and its spinoffs, and through the prickly politics that has allowed it to flourish for almost a decade.

[CanuckSARTech]

Mohawk natives give Canada's other native peoples a bad name, IMO. If you look into the majority of crisis issues in Canada surrounding natives (Oka, cigarettes, Akwesasne/Cornwall border issue, etc.), it seems to revolve around the various Mohawk nations. It's a shame, as the native peoples of Canada (like other aboriginal societies around the world) have a rich tradition and heritage, and do deserve some special recognitions. But they piss it all away when they pull stuff like this.