I think this activity would be completely Illegal in the USA. Crossing state lines with more than a couple of packs of smokes can land you in prison for a long time.
Is this actually true? I don't see any sources vouching for this claim from a quick search.
"Illegal possession and/or transportation and distribution of more than 10,000 unstamped (non-state tax-paid) cigarettes."
This is mostly a tax revenue issue. Some other interesting info at the state level can be found at https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/cigarette-taxes-cig...
tldr; it will almost certainly take more than transporting "a few packs" for personal consumption to get in trouble in the "land of the free" at the federal level, however each state will he more or less aggressive depending on its own priorities
1. https://www.atf.gov/resource-center/fact-sheet/fact-sheet-to...
Not a smoker, but vaping seems like it would avoid so much hassle. Buy a barrel of the stuff and be set for the rest of your life.
That's why Germany introduced an insane tax on liquids [1]... but not just on nicotine shots that you add to base liquid, or aroma shots, but on the base liquid itself.
So while you can definitely go ahead and buy PG/VG wholesale without the tax, the moment you add nic shots or fill it into your vape, you commit the crime of tax evasion. Utterly ridiculous and shows just how much pull Big Tobacco still has on politics.
Side note: there's quite the scare of Big Tobacco going around of vape liquid being toxic and whatnot... it's bullshit. The base liquid and aromas have all been known and used for decades in ordinary disco foggers and hazers. The only dangers around vaping are nicotine itself and shoddily manufactured liquids like the infamous deadly cannabis extracts from a few years ago that contained leftover oil contaminations.
I suppose if you bring a moving band's worth of cigarettes across the state line, you're going to have to do some mighty fast talking to convince people that you weren't planning on reselling them