Shisha Tobacco In Vancouver Bc

[steezy604]

Hey what's up?

 

Any other shisha smokers in the Vancouver area?  I have a beautiful KM Tri Metal Hookah and now I am looking for shisha tobacco.  Everything is insanely overpriced in Canada.  Where do you vancouver shisha smokers get your tobacco from? Do you guys have any recommendations from websites and what to expect with the the shipping / border taxes etc? Anyone want to sell me some? haha

 

It would be cool to meet some other shisha lovers in my area.  I live close to downtown.  Cheers

 

Dave

[â€On]

Not van, Edmonton here, but your best bet for finding locally is to hit up every middle eastern store you can find and just ask them if they have any Nakhla or Al Fakher, as those are the two brands most will carry. Many will have it, but not display it or openly sell it, so you just gotta find one that does. The biggest problem is in how much it can be marked up. Technically speaking, 250g of hookah tobacco should be taxed and sold for around $90-$100 CAD. Nope, I'm not joking there, the tobacco taxation on it is completely ridiculous, something like 34c a gram. So, everyone who is selling it for less than that (basically everyone who isn't a tobacconist), has smuggled it in and paid, probably, around 8 bucks for 250g. Your best bet is to just order online (I most commonly use 5star), order more than 1kg of tobacco (under 1kg, they deliver and tax the shit out of it, over 1kg they send it back to shipper...the whole thing will take months and months), and cross your fingers it doesn't get stopped at customs.

[steezy604]

Thanks for your reply.  I don't really want to wait months and months for some tobacco in the mail (or are you saying that is a worst case scenario?).  I hear that if they deliver it with an insane amount of tax you can refuse the package and they send it back to the seller (lose out on shipping costs I guess).  

What about if I took a trip to Seattle and brought back a couple of 250 gram tins.  Any advice on going through the border services with shisha?  Should I claim it?  Should I take it out of it's original packaging and then put it in another container? 

 

Cheers ;)

[â€On]

No, no, you can get it delivered within a couple days, the months and months thing is this: if customs finds it and deems it tobacco, they will process it and then send it back to the seller (assuming you bought more than 1kg). This process takes months. Once it's back to the seller you can maybe get them to try and send it to you again, but you're probably SOL and you lose out on shipping costs.

What I am saying to you is that if they DO catch it at customs, they can not legally send it to you if you have more than 1kg. As long as you ONLY HAVE TOBACCO IN YOUR ORDER, they won't destroy it either, they will send it back to seller. If you have a pipe, a hose, a bowl, ANYTHING EXCEPT TOBACCO IN YOUR ORDER, they will destroy the tobacco, no matter the amount, and send you the other products. You could take a trip to seattle and bring back a couple tins, but if you get caught, you'll have to pay 34c a gram tax on it or destroy it. Might as well try to bring back a few kilos if you're willing to take the risk of destroying it (because it's not worth paying the tax). You would have better luck buying it in seattle and shipping it to yourself though, border patrols are pretty thorough if you do get searched.

[KnightHawk63]

Duct tape it underneath your car ;)