Going on my trip soon and need to know if I need to stock up. I smoke Marlbro.
“Imported” brands are way more expensive than domestic, a carry over from when Spain was a much poorer country and the flow of hard currency to Tobacco brands in outher countries was discouraged. I think Marlboros are about twice the price of the local Fortuna brand, which is an acceptable substitute.
You’ll find street vendors everywhere, selling smuggled Camels, Marlboros ASF everywhere. Fortunas are about €2 and my WAG, since I haven’t been to Spain in a couple of years and no longer smoke, is that Marlboros are about €4. Street vendors would then charge €3.
Note - these Marlsboros aren’t American, but made in Europe under license. They taste differently. I’d say the difference between American Marlboro lights and European are about as big as between M lights and Camel lights in the US.
BTW: a cigarette is a cigarro in Spanish. A cigar is a puro. Cuban cigars are everywhere for a very good price, but I’m not sure if it’s legal to buy them in other countries and bring them to the US or if it’s just directly from Cuba.
It’s not. When we went to the Bahamas on a cruise, they made it clear we were allowed to bring them on board and smoke them in areas where smoking was allowed, but they couldn’t be taken back into the US.
Warning: the black-market ‘smuggled’ ones are quite likely to be counterfeit. That is, not just an evasion of tax, but they’re appallingly-bad cigarettes in a fake Marlboro pack.
Actually no. It’s too late for me to look for cites, but there was a settlement between Big Tobacco and the EU, where BT agreed to pay [whatever amount], because they, in effect, supplied the smugglers with the real deal, thus helping criminals and taking away substantial tax revenue.
That’s not saying there aren’t counterfeit smokes, just that real ones are out there, maybe to a lesser extent after that settlement.
[aside]
Is bringing Cuban cigars to the US really that big a deal? Say you picked up ten Cohibas for personal use - what would the fine be, should you get caught?
That’s a true story, but many many years out of date. The ones on sale now are counterfeit (along with counterfeit viagra, condoms, Calvin Klein handbags, etc etc)
You might want to take your own. I found that American marlboro ligts were a bit milder than the European versions I found in Spain.
Really, I haven’t been for seven years, but I remember the counterfeit ones tasted about the same. My understanding is that they were smuggled in from Morocco.
British Customs and Excise say about 6 billion British brand cigarettes are exported to Cyprus each year even though the island has only 700,000 people. Apparently Cyprus has taken over from Andorra as the “European cigarette laundering hub”. In my experience black market cigarettes are the same as taxed cigarettes. Then again, I quit smoking a while ago.