Cigarettes: The Most Stable International Currency. In China, expensive cigarettes (not to be confused with counterfeits of popular brands) are sometimes used as bribes. Cash can be difficult to handle, or outright illegal, in some places. Since a smoking ban (and subsequent black-market trade in cigarettes) in US prisons, canned mackerel (previously on MetaFilter) has become the exchange medium of choice. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Oct 2, 2012 - 34 comments

The nation is awash with a new black market commodity... Across the country, retailers are finding massive amounts of this product missing. In West St. Paul, Minnesota, one enterprising individual has taken $25,000 dollars of this chemical that some Police Departments are calling liquid gold: Tide Detergent
posted by symbioid on Mar 13, 2012 - 100 comments

The Shadow Superpower: a survey of globalized black market trade, and the size of the informal economy. [more inside]
posted by StrikeTheViol on Nov 2, 2011 - 25 comments

With the crackdown on smoking and higher cigarette taxes in New York City, people who sell individual cigarettes, also known as loosies, are rapidly gaining new customers.
posted by reenum on Apr 5, 2011 - 69 comments

"Troy is only 8, but he knows the words to Yanguna, an Arnhem Land song celebrating kava. He sings in tune with Saltwater Band's anthem to the drug as the car bumps along the dirt track. Kava came to Arnhem Land 20 years ago as a ray of hope. Aboriginal community leaders believed the calming drink from the Pacific could be a peaceful alternative to alcohol, then raging through Aboriginal communities like a cyclone. But kava became just another abused substance.”
posted by jason's_planet on May 1, 2007 - 43 comments

I was a slave in Puglia. A long first-person exposé, in English, about immigrant slave labor in Italy, from Fabrizio Gatti writing in the Italian newspaper L'Espresso. "I can hire you. Tomorrow," he promises. "Do you have a girl friend?" "A girlfriend?" "You have to bring me a woman. For the boss. If you bring him one, he'll put you to work right away. Any girl will do." He points to a twenty year-old woman and her companion, working on the conveyor belt of a huge tractor that is being used to gather tomatoes. "Those two are Romanians, just like you. She slept with the boss." "But I'm alone." "No work for you then." Photo galleries. Italian version (includes additional sidebars not found in the English version, including local and government reaction to the exposé and more photo galleries under the sidebar "Reportage Fotografico.")
posted by Mo Nickels on Sep 4, 2006 - 16 comments

With the apparent theft of ancient maps from Yale and the Getty admitting to displaying stolen antiquities from Italy, what does the blackmarket antiquities trade look like?
posted by raaka on Oct 5, 2005 - 18 comments

Transdniester. The unrecognized Moldovian breakaway republic is your one stop shopping solution for black market arms.
posted by srboisvert on Dec 7, 2003 - 12 comments

The Gun Industry Sins Exposed? (nyt - registration required)

But Mr. Ricker, who has been working for more than two decades in the gun industry, including a stint as a lawyer for the N.R.A., said the gun makers had long known that "the diversion of firearms from legal channels of commerce to the black market" takes place "principally at the distributor/dealer level."
(print friendly version)
posted by lilboo on Feb 4, 2003 - 19 comments

Finally, a product that Amazon.com doesn't sell. Now that the holiday season is over, it's time to start saving for next year's gifts. Just the thing for the couple that has almost everything.
posted by bondcliff on Jan 2, 2001 - 7 comments