I've been wanting to say this for some time. I've been waiting for the right question--that is, why is this product illegal?
First of all, it's sold for $6. It's manufactured in a facility that probably doesn't have a licence, which is an infraction. Once it was manufactured there, it was smuggled across the border. That's another law broken. Then the excise tax wasn't applied; another law broken. The provincial tobacco tax wasn't applied when sold off the reserve. That's another law broken--and we're not talking about the GST and the PST.
Then what happens? It's sold to the consumer. Is there a health warning? No. Do we have the constituents on the side? No, we do not. Is the paper of low-ignition propensity? No, it is not.
There are at least a dozen health-related infractions with this bag. Then there's the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, which the Competition Bureau has to apply.
What's in this? I don't know.
If this was beer--someone's selling beer in clear plastic bottles, let's say, that are unmarked--would you drink it? No. But everyone smokes this stuff.
The name of the manufacturer is not on it. That's another infraction. The Competition Bureau is supposed to enforce that. What's in it is not marked. Where it comes from is not marked.
Health Canada has a dozen, at least a dozen, infractions of health regulations and the Tobacco Act itself. These are all violated systematically. None of this is enforced.
So that's why this is illegal. It's illegal: let me count the ways.