A Nation of Sugar Criminals [Updated: Crampton's been punked]

Update: The CBC show that produced the report is satire. So everything below falls under the "Eric's been punked again" file. I blame both Josh Gans's and Alex Tabarrok's earlier tweeting of the story. Previously in the "Crampton's been punked" file: Jim Henson meets Ayn Rand.

Thanks to the CBC's @Geoff_Turner for the heads-up.

Original post follows below.



Last year, it was the heist from the Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel.

Now we find out that Canadians have been smuggling Kinder Surprise Eggs to the Americans.

A 500 ft. tunnel running from the outskirts of Abbotsford, B.C. to a shed in Sumas, WA was detected late last week by Dale Lawson while he was walking his dog: "Buster got into this weird looking shed," say Lawson, "he comes out with chocolate in his mouth." 

Lawson, worried that his dog could get sick, took the chocolate and found it contained a plastic capsule. "I thought maybe it was drugs but when I opened it up it was a little plastic fox dressed like a queen. I called the police right away."

Police arrived just as Melanie Russet, Marg Spooner and Lynn Dodwell emerged from the tunnel with flats of chocolate eggs. The three were taken into custody and more arrests on both sides of the border are expected.

It's estimated that up to 800,000 eggs cross the border every year and while there have yet to be any reported fatalities, it's only a matter of time before a child chokes on a tiny house with googly eyes or a pen shaped like a ski.

First off, people like Dale Lawson exemplify everything that's wrong with America. If your government is evil enough to ban children from getting chocolate eggs with toys inside, and you find a tunnel being used by heroic candy smugglers to bring Kinder Surprise to American kids, your first thought sure as heck oughtn't be "Hey, let's call the cops about this little plastic toy fox dressed like a queen." The nation that overthrew George III over trivial levels of taxation now produces people who call in the cops for chocolates. Did Patrick Henry really say, "If you see anything weird, report it immediately"?

But the story does help to remind us of the futility of some kinds of bans. If smugglers can make a buck by sneaking Kinder Surprise Eggs under the American border....