If you want to see a messed-up peaceful border situation, there is a Mohawk community straddling the U.S./Canadian border with the actual line going through NY State, Ontario, Quebec, Cornwall Island, and the St. Lawrence River. The convoluted rules inhabitants have to follow to see relatives, go to school, get medical care and conduct daily business are extreme.
Vince Thompson is one of about 2,000 Mohawks who lives there. He's also represents the Island as a chief on the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. Just to take his daughter to a dentist appointment and go to some meetings, he says, he has to go back and forth through U.S. and Canadian customs, waiting in line and answering intrusive questions each time. "I’m going home. I gotta report in. Then I gotta race back home, pick up my daughter, then report back in, then proceed to the dental or medical appointments," Thompson shakes his head. "It’s unbelievable."
So it seems like the worst outcome has been achieved then - overbearing bureaucracy for locals engaged in their legitimate business, and a relatively free hand for smugglers moving things across the border illegitimately?
Right. I believe that is the place where the American side was (on paper) consuming hundreds or thousands of times the normal rate of Canadian cigarettes.
What was happening was that the cigarettes were being sold as export items (so little/no Canadian tax paid), exported to the American side, then smuggled back into Canada via the Canadian side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akwesasne