Editor’s Note: Translated from the Spanish via Google Translate. The original article is available here.
From: Más por Más
They are illegal, no data on the substances they contain, experts say are most harmful, but the streets are selling like hotcakes
Alejandro Melgoza
Variety: The authorities have detected more than 90 brands of cigarettes illegal.
Like a layman, packets of cigarettes are colorful towers of nearly two meters high. There are different brands, flavors, designs and nationalities, and in all its main feature is the price: they are very cheap.
These towers packs occupy much of the street Ortega, in Tepito, epicenter of illegal cigarettes in the city. There is possible to find, at least, where only 23 posts Paraguayan, Belizean, Vietnamese and Indian brands are sold.
14 years ago, these cigarettes began to join the long list of products sold in Tepito, remember the chronicler of the neighborhood, Alfonso Hernandez.
He explains the first to arrive were imitations of brands like Marlboro; packs had fewer parts or cigarettes were smaller. Then they started selling products from other countries.
The cigarettes produced abroad should be introduced to Mexico with a prior import permit issued by the Federal Commission for Protection Against Health Risks (COFEPRIS), “prior review of compliance with legal requirements,” according to the unit itself.
In January 2015, COFEPRIS issued a health alert warning that illegal cigarettes are a risk to health, as “product may be counterfeit, adulterated or even made with unknown ingredients, which increases the possibility of containing compounds and other potentially toxic to the plant of snuff “chemicals.
