According to the “Drug War Clock” kept at DrugSense.org, after only two weeks into the new year the United States government has already spent over $1.2 billion on the war on drugs. In fact, in the 10 seconds it takes you to read this entire sentence, the government will have spent a good $5,000 on that war.
Whether it’s cocaine, computers, money, antiquities, oil, cigarettes or liquor, authorities worldwide — mostly government employees with only the slimmest of incentives — are in pitched combat with the ever-increasing ingenuity of smugglers, driven as they are by the tremendous profits available when a smuggled shipment reaches its destination.
No.10 Sex Lube Tubes
Would your average, low-paid customs official be inclined to inspect the contents of a shipment if there was a chance they might find the contents of that shipment to be somehow unappealing? Steroid smugglers were probably banking on this very response from Thai customs officials to push through an especially large shipment of bottles carrying the label, “Gay Lube Oil.” For whatever reason, the ruse didn’t work.
No.9 Parking Lots
Elaborate tunnels dug under the Mexico-U.S. border are nothing new. As their tunnels have been uncovered, drug smugglers have had to adapt. The latest technique was tunneling with a twist: Smugglers tunneled under a border fence, into U.S. territory, and underneath a parking lot in Nogales, Arizona. A car with a partially hollowed-out bottom waited, parked with care. Smugglers then tunneled up underneath the vehicle, removed a large plug of pavement and quietly loaded up the vehicle with drugs before returning the pavement to its original place.
No.8 Custom-made Car Parts
Like in the new movie Contraband, sometimes smugglers aren’t trying to move goods, they’re trying to move the proceeds of those goods — namely, cash. Such an operation requires the same amount of consideration as any other. Just ask the Ohio couple who, a few years ago, tried to ship their old Chevy Trailblazer overseas. An eagle-eyed customs official noticed something odd about their Chevy: they had installed their own custom-made running boards.
A closer inspection revealed that the couple was trying to smuggle over $600,000 in cash to the Middle East, specifically to agents working for the political/military group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
No.7 Cheerleaders
This scheme is of the human trafficking kind — a despicable trade that nonetheless has its share of clever moments.
Despite the assumption, Colombian criminals weren’t trying to turn local women into drug mules when they tried to smuggle a team of cheerleaders into the United States recently. In fact, the women weren’t even cheerleaders, they were merely Colombian nationals with phony documentation trying to gain entry into the U.S.
No.6 Unsuspecting Commuters
In the summer of 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered a scheme to smuggle drugs right over the international bridges found in El Paso and Juarez, but making unwitting drug mules out of daily commuters.
Lookouts hired by the drug cartels called “hawks” watched the bridges for vehicles with routine travel back and forth. Once they honed in on one, they would attach a GPS device to the car, use the VIN number to have a locksmith make duplicate keys, then, when the vehicle was in Mexico they would stuff if with drugs. It’s unknown how many people have unknowingly carried drugs into the U.S. from Mexico by this method, as many of the drivers themselves remain none the wiser.
No.5 Zip Lines
Finding new methods to smuggle merchandise sometimes requires nothing more high-tech than a rope and a pulley.
Such was the case for smugglers who were trying to get Apple products from Hong Kong into mainland China: Instead of applying the principles of chemistry or employing GPS devices, these smugglers merely set up a zip line that traversed the border by air, going from one roof to another. Putting the merchandise into a large satchel, they then operated a hand-crank with good old elbow grease.
No.4 Pipelines
If you’re going to smuggle a liquid from one country to another, what better, more efficient way can there be than by building a pipeline? This is exactly what criminal gangs in Mexico have done in order to smuggle stolen Mexican oil to sell to U.S. refineries.
Not to be outdone, gang members in Russia built their own mile-long pipeline to pump vodka from Russia into the neighboring country of Estonia, where it is significantly more expensive. Officials became suspicious when they seized several thousand gallons of vodka.
No.3 Lollipops
Lollipops retain appeal among some legal drug manufacturers as a very simple method of drug delivery, especially when patients have trouble swallowing. Unfortunately, smugglers are stealing their idea.
Recently, state police in Illinois seized 55 lollipops in the shape of Santa Claus and maple leafs that turned out to test positive for both THC (the active drug in marijuana) and, shockingly, PCP. New York State police uncovered their own lollipop shipment, only these didn’t have pot or PCP — they were found to contain heroin.
No.2 Sculptures
Reminiscent of a scene from the movie Traffic, police in Colombia have been finding cocaine in the most unexpected places.
Officials recently learned that smugglers were mixing cocaine in with the clay used to cast replicas of sculptures by the famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero. The replicas were then being shipped to locations worldwide. Smugglers have also made cocaine-based replicas of such revered items as the World Cup trophy and the crucifix, as well as amazing achievements such as a 42-piece crockery set made entirely out of compressed cocaine.
No.1 Submarines
Few recent smuggling developments better serve as signs of the times as the drug submarines that seem to be showing up with astonishing frequency.
Officials in the U.S. have found increasingly complex and mechanical submarines, some as long as 100 feet and capable of an enormous 8-ton cocaine payload that were used once by drug cartels before being abandoned. These extraordinary one-off machines, often scuttled by their owners after serving their purpose, are getting more and more sophisticated, with massive diesel tanks, ballast and compressed air tanks, satellite navigation systems, night-vision capability, and more.
Gangs Goons and Gunz 