And you thought the line-ups to get into the United States were too long the last time you went.

Despite the fact that prices are roughly 14% cheaper across the border, online shopping, lack of passports, border delays and the price of gas have kept many shoppers close to home.

But with the duty-free limits increasing this weekend, consumers will once again start looking south, predicts BMO Capital Markets.

Thanks largely to a weaker dollar, the price gap has dropped from the 20% price differential that BMO found last year, but higher duty-free thresholds could make up the difference.

Mayors from eight B.C. communities have joined together to lobby the provincial government to regulate and tax marijuana as part of a strategy to make communities safer, boosting revenues at the same time.

In their letter, the mayors argue prohibition has led to large-scale grow-ops, increased organized crime, ongoing gang violence, and larger police budgets. And they're not alone.

Across the border, Massachusetts legislators are debating a bill that would legalize, regulate and tax the commercial production of marijuana. Colorado and Washington will vote on marijuana legalization initiatives later this year.

A native-run discount smoke shop in western Manitoba has reignited the debate over tax-free smokes.

Last month, officials seized $10,000 worth of contraband cigarettes, which were not authorized for sale in the province. The next day, Dakota Chundee, which doesn’t sit on reserve land, was open again, crowded with non-Aboriginal buyers.

The smoke shop has been selling untaxed cigarettes, which come from Mohawk distributors from Quebec, for $40 a carton or $5 a pack, less than half the regular price in Manitoba.

The raid, and subsequent reopening of the smoke shack, is the latest in a growing frontier war between First Nations and western provincial governments. There's nothing illegal about natives selling tax-free cigarettes to other natives on the reserve. It's when they end up off-reserve that's causing the problem.

This is old news in Ontario and Quebec, where the booming Indian tobacco business has already meant billions in lost taxes, but Indian cigarette sales haven’t really been an issue in the West.

Thanks to a decades-old combination of tariffs, quotas and simply price fixing, Canadians pay higher prices for eggs, dairy, and poultry than most other countries.

And according to the OECD - the organization representing the world's developed economies - we pay nearly double the world price for milk, cream and butter, for instance, and two-thirds more than the American price.

The culprit is the quota system, which limits what leaves farms’ gates, thus stifling  -- along with large tariffs that block the entry into the country of similar goods -- the natural selection process that governs most businesses.