Hi all,

Returning on a trip from Montego Bay and I won't have a chance to do any real shopping unless I shop at the resort. They want $30 for all of the popular brand cigars, sold individually. The Tobacco Store inside the Montego Bay's duty free shopping area (departures) lists their most expensive Cuban cigars as $23.

Now I've read on here threads from 2011 and older where people say 99.9% of the Cubans found in Jamaica are fake -- but does anyone have any recent experience with the Tobacco Store inside the Montego Bay duty free area to know whether or not they're selling fake cigars? I was told Americans can bring 5 Cuban cigars back into the country but if they're going to be fake I'm not going to bother.

You were misinformed about the 5 cigars, unless by America you mean Canada.

Importation of any amount of Cuban Cigars into the USA is currently illegal, even if brought into USA with legal Visa to travel to Cuba.

As far as the Duty Free store, I would have high confidence in all of their products; cigars, perfume, alcohol to all be genuine.

That's what I thought too. The lady at the resort's cigar shop did say that if I was worried about it she could remove the bands off of the cigar and package them in a Jamaican brand box. :-)


So if buying ANY cuban cigars to bring into the US is illegal and I'll have to provide proof of purchase (receipt) if I declare the cigars then it really sounds like my only option is to buy Jamaican.

Has anyone ever bought Cuban cigars at the duty free shops and successfully sneaked them into the US? Was it as easy as just removing the band from the cigars or does that only work if you're storing the cigars in your checked-on luggage?

Will be tough to find a smuggling confession.
Take the bands off.
They were cigars you took with you and didn't get to smoke.

what he said. openly asking about illegal actions usually isn't a good idea :-)

http://www.cigarasylum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=55040

Ah - my bad. When I had googled Montego Bay and cuban cigars, Google brought me to old threads on this very website openly discussing cuban cigars being brought back into the US which was the entire reason why I joined the site. I'll remove my questions in my previous post.

Edit: Looks like I'm not allowed to edit my old post, so I can't remove my questions. My apologies for breaking the rules - like I said, specifically registered because I saw the older threads openly discussing it so I thought it was OK to discuss.

Looks like Jamaican cigars it is.