Let's clear this up right now: drugs are bad, smuggling is a crime, drug lords and their traffickers are black-hearted, vicious, malignant persons. But you have to admit: they're pretty damn creative. And the means they've used to get their product to their customers through the years are nothing short of extraordinary.
Here are 14 barely believable methods that have gotten drugs from here to there. They may not be legal, but they sure are creative.
This improvised cannon was confiscated in Mexicali, Mexico, on Feb. 26 of this year Police in the border city say the cannon was used to hurl packets of marijuana across a border fence into California. The truck-mounted device is made of PVC piping attached to an air compressor and driven by an automobile engine. It could launch up to 13kg of drugs at a time.
Photo: Mexicali Public Safety Department/AP
A sailor walks past this homemade semi-submersible vessel, seized on land by Colombian authorities from drug traffickers at the Bahia Malaga Navy base, on Colombia's Pacific coast in 2009.
Photo: Christian Escobar Mora/AP
This powerboat was carrying a large haul of marijuana when the Danish police busted the armed smugglers on January 7th, 2013.
Photo: Soren Schnoor/POLFOTO/AP
A woman was arrested by airport police carrying almost three pounds of cocaine in her breasts. You can see the drug implants—and the fresh surgical wound—in the image below.
Photo: La Policia Nacional
Suspected smugglers attempt to drive a silver Jeep Cherokee over the 14 feet high U.S.-Mexico border fence in Yuma, Arizona with the help of a makeshift ramp in Oct. 31, 2012.
Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection/AP
The entrance to an illegal cross-border tunnel found underneath a bathroom sink inside a warehouse in Tijuana, Mexico, July 12, 2012. The 220-yard tunnel, presumably designed to smuggle drugs into the United States, was lit and ventilated.
Photo: Alejandro Cossio/AP//ICE/AP
National Guard troops have seized a surprising number of weed-firing catapults over the years.
Photo: dossierpolitico.com/National Guard
This ultra-light aircraft was carrying 253lbs of marijuana when it was captured in December, 2008 in the Tucson, Arizona area. According to U.S. government statistics, there were 228 known aircraft incursion along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2010 alone.
Photo: Immmigration Customs Enforcement/AP
What to do with that old Wiipad you haven't touched in years? Stuff it with marijuana, of course.
Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection/AP
Drug smugglers used t-shirt Cannons to shoot canisters filled with marijuana 500ft over the border.
Photo: CBP Arizona/Colin Ybarra
A 19-year-old man pretending to be disabled was caught with at the U.S.-Mexico border with this weed-stocked wheelchair in 2011.
Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection/AP
This helicopter was transporting 760kg of cocaine when it crashed in Totonicapan, 200km northwest of Guatemala City, in 2003.
Photo: Edgar Vasquez/El Nuevo Quetzalteco/AP
This plane crashed police blockade after pilots had unloaded drugs into several cars, in San Esteban, 160 kilometers east of Tegucigalpa, Honduras (2003).
Photo: Honduran Security Minister/AP
Top photo of seized marijuana found packed in coffee cans at Tijuana's international airport: Guillermo Arias/AP
Do you miss anything from the list above? Post it in the comments!