Meth Burritos and Other Ways Drugs are Smuggled into the United States

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Just last weekend, U.S. border agents near Nogales, Arizona, caught a 23-year-old woman trying to smuggle two burritos full of methamphetamine into the United States from Mexico. Despite being wrapped in tortillas, the meth—valued at more than $3,000—was detected by a drug-sniffing dog. Apparently, some were not impressed by the scheme. Gizmodo wrote, “To be honest, the whole thing seems pretty low-effort. Try harder smugglers.” But truth be told, these kind of smuggling attempts more likely than not go undetected all the time.
“Simplistic and low key smuggling methods work all the time,” John, a convicted drug smuggler doing 20 calendars in the federal Bureau of Prisons tells The Fix. “I did it for years by just basically putting it right in front of customs agents' faces. It was too obvious for them. If not for the dogs, they wouldn’t have gotten this girl.”
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When John was out in the late 1990s, it was a different world for smugglers. He would pack kilos of cocaine in his suitcase and check it through baggage on the airline. He’d mail boxes of marijuana by freight or second-day air into the states, only wrapping the pot in Saran Wrap and shelf liner paper, with Bounce dryer sheets to throw off the dogs. Oftentimes he’d drive down to Tijuana and bring back kilos of heroin hidden behind the door panel of his Chevy truck.
But nowadays, it seems that drug smugglers are getting real creative. Post 9/11, smugglers have been coming up with all kinds of smuggling techniques. If it’s not coming in through fake carrots, its coming in by drones, or in massive underground tunnels. This innovation and ingenuity make the drug-sniffing dogs necessary for stopping shipments at the border, as proved in the burrito case.
But even though this time they were caught, I wonder how many mules have successfully made the crossing with tweaker burritos? Because with consumption rampant in the states and legalized marijuana all the rage, the cartels will continue using new methods to bring in meth, heroin and cocaine as they try to keep their coffers full of U.S. dollars.