I say "smuggle" because I'm more referring to things that are relatively harmless, but are illegal/heavily regulated in your country, while they are legal elsewhere.

It's October now meaning it's Halloween soon. So in Ireland, there is a lot of smuggling of fireworks happening across the border from the North. Bonfires and fireworks are a big part of Halloween in Ireland.

Fireworks are illegal in the Republic, and legal in the North. Sometimes it's possible to buy them mere metres over the border. It's certainly not hidden away. If the authorities really cared, it would be very easy to even observe people making a purchase from one side and search their cars as they cross. But unless someone is carrying commercial quantities, the authorities generally don't care so this personal "smuggling" is very much an open secret and no one really cares.

Is there anything similar in your country? Or maybe there was something in the past that is now legal?


38 comments

  1. I believe most people from “down there” bring way more dried meat and pet bottles full of self-distilled alcohol back from their holidays than is allowed.

  2. Fireworks from Poland although I would not call them harmless tbh. Apart from that it used to be weed from the Netherlands and cheap cigarettes from Balkan countries. I do believe we supply cheap(er) booze to Scandinavian people.

  3. People.

    When people are smuggled into the UK they often end up being treated abominably, but they are themselves harmless.

  4. The biggest ”harmless” smuggling operation into Finland is probably snus brought over from Sweden. Although it might have decreased now that nicotine pouches are being sold domestically too, but they are tobacco free. Only Sweden can sell the tobacco pouches.

  5. The “booze cruise” used to be a big part of English culture, especially if you lived in the South and could get to a port easily. I don’t think it is such a big thing now as you would be eligible to pay duties.

    Basically, get up early in the morning, drive to Dover and take a ferry across to France, head to a massive hypermarket and fill the vehicle with wine at a much cheaper price than you could get it in the UK, then head back across the Channel and be back home for dinner. You didn’t have to pay duties for it so long as it was for personal consumption or to be given as a gift.

    Whether the customs officers really believed that you intended to drink 20 cases of Beaujolais yourself, I don’t know.

  6. God, I wish we had laws around fireworks like yours. I’m happy for professionals to do displays safely, less happy for any dickhead to get hold of them and cause mayhem, especially the kids who just light them and thrown them at people and animals.

    People import medication that can be bought otc in other countries but is prescription only here, quite a lot.

  7. There’s a lot of fireworks smuggling from Germany to the Netherlands. But I won’t call that really harmless.

    Also vapes with all kinds of flavours are forbidden in the Netherlands now, so they’re bought in Germany for example.

  8. I sometimes ask my friends from Ukraine and Belarus to bring me a pack of flavored cigarettes.

  10. Not my country but people have been smuggling cheese from the EU into Russia for several years.

    Also smuggling kabanos sausages and non-classic Prince Polo into Iceland. I don’t know how it is right now, but it used to be a thing 10-15 years ago.

  11. Certain medicines that are restricted in how they can be sold in Sweden but not in other countries.

    For me and I guess other (former) athletes its stuff like Diclofenac, a pretty mild NSAID (think slow-acting ibuprofen), and it is great for treating stuff like muscle inflammation since that sometimes require weakening an inflammatory response long enough for the muscle to properly heal.

    And using paracetamol or ibuprofen for that is less effective.

    Sweden made the pills with Diclofenac prescription requirement but in plenty of EU country it is sold over the counter.

    And yes there may be indications that it increases certain cardiac issues, but come on. It is either rehab and low training for 3 months or 5 days on 100mg Diclofenac!

  13. When I come home from the USA I tend to have a tonne of food with colourings and additives that aren’t available here. E numbers galore.

    On the flip side I take kinder eggs to the states You can’t have them there because they consider the small toy to be a chocking hazard.

  14. It bugs the crap out of me that Greece is still so uptight about pot. I could make a fortune if I wanted to just smuggle pot into this country.

  15. Medicines are “delivered” from Greece. They might be unavailable in Bulgaria, maybe they are cheaper there, or just you bypass the need for a prescription.

  16. Sea shells

    In most tourist countries it’s illegal to export, and end up seized at the airport.

    But if you go by car, well… you return home like a sea shell king.

  18. I have Chinese people in the family. Any time they go back to Malaysia or Hong Kong they bring back packets of garishly but monolingually labelled dried stuff and give them to us without explaining what they are. Usually we figure it out within a year or so. I don’t think we’ve made soup with moth killer yet.

  19. its not really smuggling but in Belgium people that pass through or go near Luxembourg often buy cigarettes and/or tabacco there. they are so cheap there that people buy it in bulk.

    i was talking to someone that saw a person buy €7000 worth of stuff at once.

  20. Depends on your definition of harmless but I used to know someone who worked at Gatwick airport Customs and the flights from Amsterdam always needed loads of them to wait there for the incoming passengers!

    I’m not talking about Big time drug dealers but people used to bring through spliffs with them and frequently got caught!

  21. Earlier I smuggled whole nutmegs to Finland. I think they were banned at the time, or at least not available.

  22. You forgot cannabis. I had a childhood friend that lost three fingers to a firework so I don’t consider them harmless. I know some misinformed people will say cannabis isn’t harmless but more and more countries are legalising after doing some research

  23. Food and alcohol lol. From France to Geneva / Swiss. Much much cheaper in France (often even better, sorry Swiss) but there is a limit for some stuff (meat, dairy, alcohol) but not many people care. Fines are huge if you get caught (they will measure it). But people don’t want to go back and forth often so just hope for the best

  24. Melatonin and other non-prescription drugs and supplements that are available in other countries but prohibited here. Any time people go to the US, they usually do a pharmacy run.

  26. Black market tobacco is thought to make up to 1/4 or even 1/3 of total consumption in the UK now.

  27. Historic one.. though skateboard were forbidden in norway all the way to 1989. So people smuggled skateboards into norway from sweden in the 70s/80s… another very popular thing to smuggle into norway back then was police-radios. All the electronic shops accross the border sold police radios that you could use in norway… even chocolate-cigarettes were forbidden in norway… So that would be smugling as well. So much stuff that were legal in sweden and forbidden in norway back in those days. Norway were the kind of country where they debated about whether we should have color-tv or not back then..

  28. As a child, butter was forbidden to be transported across the French-Swiss border (something to do with tax, and I don’t remember which way). As we used to regularly make the trip over to France, I got very amused by the customs officers asking about butter. I just couldn’t understand it!

  29. I buy sausages and cheddar cheese in the U.K. and bring them back to Belgium on the eurostar, which has been prohibited since brexit! Shh 🤫

  30. Lots of people drive to Germany to buy tobacco products, which are heavily taxed in the Netherlands. A pack of 20 cigarettes costs €11 here and €8,50 in Germany. A pack of rolling tobacco costs €25 here and €11 in Germany. People literally spends thousands of euros on a single trip.

  31. Logitech keyboards from the US.

    Logitech is stubborn and only sells their premium keyboards with the ISO layout in Europe (with the vertical enter key) but in the Netherlands ANSI (horizontal enter key) is still more common. We do use the US-international version with the € on the 5-key.

    For me it is a huge deal breaker because I write code for a living so I use ():;{[]}<>, etc. quite a bit so I don’t want to relearn that.

  33. SWIM smuggles cheese from a non-EU home country whenever he comes back from a visit. The cheeses are  refrigerated, sealed and made from pasteurized milk, so SWIM doesn’t feel bad about it. No, they aren’t available here. 

  34. Hi-flow toilets are not legal to sell (but not possess) in the US. Distributors fake paperwork to import from Canada.

    Raw milk cheeses were also illegal (not sure if still the case) and people would bring them from Quebec.

    Obviously not a big priority for Customs.

  35. Melatonin. It is prescription only in Denmark, and it is extremely difficult to get your doctor to prescribe it.

    However, it is perfectly legal for individual citizens to bring it into Denmark, either by buying it physically or online. So, a LOT of people do that.

    It is so stupid. The medical board want to monitor melatonin use closely, but the way they have chosen to do it, result in no monitoring of the vast majority of melatonin consumed in Denmark.

  36. Like any kind of dairy products, fresh meat and vegetable, fruits, bread and others? Yeah.

  37. Royal British Legion paraphernalia. Since Brexit, the Poppy Shop does not allow sales of the charity’s items in the EU. So expats have to smuggle in their poppies.

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