When a Manitoba native named Dakota native smokes canada is charged with selling illegal cigarettes on his reserve, it’s another sign that the frontier war between First Nations and western provincial governments is heating up. The province’s seizure of 16 million cigarettes from a Quonset hut in Hobbema last month (the brand: Rainbow Tobacco) may be the tipping point, but the controversy is also about land claims.

The border between legal and contraband is fuzzy: Provincial tobacco taxes apply on reserve, but the federal Indian Act says that the government cannot tax “the personal property of an Indian or a band situated on a reserve.” This creates the potential for confusing, inconsistent treatment of reserve-based private enterprise.

As a result, some provinces take steps to limit the availability of lower-cost contraband cigarettes. These include ensuring that on-reserve prices are the same as those in the rest of the province and enforcing the provincial tobacco tax in all stores, including convenience and gas stations.

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Despite these efforts, there is still a great deal of demand for smuggled smokes, especially among youth. Data from an ITC Canada survey showed that, for example, of Ontario youth ever-smokers, 10% smoked First Nations/Native brands weekly and 7% smoked them daily.

Regardless of the legality of sales, these smuggled smokes may have significant health impacts. In particular, they can skew data on youth smoking rates by distorting the proportion of youth who are regular smokers. In the case of regular smoking, this distortion can lead to falsely inflated estimates of youth-specific health risks.