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Originally Posted by robkelk
Legal drinking age at the time in Quebec was 18, in New Brunswick was 19, and in Maine was 21. College kids will be headed north to drink, not south.
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Ok, thanks. Incidentally, do you remember/know what the situation with driving licences in Maine in the 1970s to the 1980s would have been? Just so I don't put in some blooper in the background of an NPC...
Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk
Cross-border shopping was usually done from Canada in the US, even with the unfavourable exchange rate - the selection of goods in US stores was wider and deeper than the selection in Canadian stores.
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Makes sense. On the other hand, do even the small border towns of Maine have a better selection than Canadian stores, or do people drive for three hours to the bigger towns?
Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk
As for smuggling, many border crossings between Canada and Maine were unpatrolled at the time; we wouldn't have Homeland Security and the Canada Border Services Agency for more than another decade, and there was a certain amount of pride in the two countries having the world's longest undefended border. Smuggling was trivially easy, as long as you did it "retail" instead of "wholesale" - do too much, and you draw attention to yourself and both the IRS and Canada Customs and Excise take an interest. Do a little bit, and it was a game: how much can you can get away with and not draw the attention of the authorities? This doesn't apply to major border crossings, of course; those were always staffed with Customs agents on both sides of the border. (It also doesn't apply to the modern day; the borders have tightened up substantially since 9/11.)
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This fits with what I read about the area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk
Anything with high taxes in Canada - fuel, tobacco, and alcohol - was fair game for being smuggled from the US. A major exception to this was weapons - try smuggling those, and you will attract attention. Going the other way, "soft" drugs such as marijuana were often smuggled south; while they were illegal on both sides of the border, the laws were less stringent in Canada so it was safer to produce them there. Again, this was risky - the "War on Drugs" had been taking place for over a decade by this point, and people caught with cannabis in the US were receiving stiff jail terms.
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About when did Canada start taxing alcohol higher than the US? What about cigarettes? I know they were much cheaper in the States than Canada starting in about 1990, due to severe excise tax hikes in Canada, but I haven't been able to figure out the relative pricing on cigarettes and alcohol during the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk
People might boast about bring a "40 ouncer" (a 40 oz bottle of spirits) or a "carton of smokes" across the border without declaring them, but the weapons and drug trades were kept very quiet.
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The long and interesting travelogue I read about a city boy in the 2010s visiting this area looking for family history had him remarking several times how open people were about the 'good old times' of unrestricted smuggling before 9/11 border controls. Respectable people did not hesitate to tell funny stories to a stranger about smuggling, either by themselves or family members. No one was ashamed to mention a relative who grew rich smuggling cigarettes in the 90s or an ancestor who was an alcohol bootlegger.
Unfortunately, the writer didn't mention
what they were smuggling and in which direction, once Prohibition ended and before the cigarette smuggling bonanza of the 90s.