Just got back from a trip to Detroit. While I was there, I roamed across the border to Windsor and picked up some cheap smokes. Seems like a bunch of Lions fans had the same idea picking up their tailgate supplies.
Even with the toll and gas, I would come out ahead on just one carton of cigarettes. ($40 in Detroit vs. $24 duty free.) And other than the occasional ball breaking border guard, there is nothing to stop me from going over and buying two cases of beer and six cartons of cigarettes whenever the mood strikes me.
So how do liquor stores and smoke shops make enough money to stay in business? They probably have a state minimum price which restricts their ability to match prices. So one would think that they would be out of business in a matter of months with thrifty Detroiters going to Windsor to fulfill their various vices. Yet I see smoke shops and liquor stores all over Detroit.
Am I missing somethng here or are folks in Detroit simply too lazy to hop in the car for a trip to Canada.
From here (which matches the information here), bolding mine:
Which actually surprises me, because my wife and I routinely pick up one or two liters of alcohol coming back into Detroit after a stay of less than 48 hours in Canada (plus, the last time we were in Canada, we brought four liters back across). We always declare the liquor coming back across the bridge, and we’ve never been questioned about it, so I suppose the limits just aren’t enforced too stringently.
So. There’s at least technically a legal reason not to hop back and forth. In addition, in my limited experience, there are some liquors that are substantially cheaper in Canada (Scotch, for example) and some where the price difference isn’t all that big (Godiva chocolate, for example). Even for a liter of Scotch, paying $2.75 each way to cross the bridge, plus gas expense, plus spending up to an hour (and in some cases considerably more) in line waiting for customs, makes the trip to the corner liquor store look more attractive by comparison.
Well, when I was a smoker this wouldn’t’ve worked. They don’t sell my brand in Canada. I’d at times illegally bring smokes back from Indiana, though. Just recently (before I quit) I discovered that outside one of my plants in Kentucky cigarettes were still only $23 per carton! At the time, I’d wished I’d brought back more.