The challenges faced by cigarette smugglers have proven good for business at a local convenience store.
Short Line Convenience and Video Store co-owner Liz Nurse has been writing for months about the positive effects of the closure and subsequent move of the Canada customs port of entry to Cornwall from Cornwall Island on legitimate cigarette sales.
Nurse and co-owner/husband Chris are members of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association and the Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco.
They've noticed a bump in the cigarette sales at their Second Street West store since the border was shut down on May 31, 2009 by a dispute between the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Akwesasne people over the arming of border guards.
Although specific numbers were not readily available, Chris estimated the increase could be as much as 50%.
"We've seen a lot of customers come back to us for cigarettes who had gone to other sources," said Nurse, who has owned the store for 18 years with her husband.
Most of the customers who have returned to buy cigarettes are younger and often students on a tight budget, she said, not older people with good-paying jobs.
Nurse believes the huge amount of cigarettes smuggled to Cornwall from the U.S. side of Akwesasne has taken a big dip because more of them are being seized when smugglers try to bring them through the CBSA port of entry.
While most of the cigarettes tend to be smuggled across the St. Lawrence River to Cornwall Island and Cornwall by boat or jet ski, the freezing conditions on the water are deterring many smugglers from taking that route, according to the RCMP.
As a result, the Mounties local Customs and Excise Unit seized almost triple its average amount of tobacco last week and arrested 15 people.
"Organized crime groups are being forced to bring shipments across the bridge because the river is only partially frozen in most spots," Sgt. Michael Harvey said.
Nurse said that means the illegal cigarettes are less accessible and more expensive locally.
She has heard complaints they are now double the once common price tag of $10 a carton, a price smugglers can afford to charge because they don't pay the federal and provincial government taxes applied to cigarettes.
"Most of them seem to have the attitude, 'Well too bad if we cheat the government,'" Nurse said. "Even the people who never jaywalked were buying them."
Buying a carton of cigarettes at Short Line costs anywhere from about $49 to $80, but Nurse says sales have "drastically improved."
Nurse and another local store owner recently met with MP Guy Lauzon to express concern about the smuggling problem in the area.
She gives Lauzon high marks for his efforts to make the federal government aware of the need to increase the resources being allocated to fight the problem.