When it comes to sending their contraband across the increasingly heavily guarded U.S. border, Mexico's drug cartels appear to be taking inspiration from modern pro sports — specifically from the handheld shooters used to launch T-shirts and other goodies into the stands at baseball and basketball games. Last weekend, U.S. Border Patrol agents found 33 cans holding 85 pounds of marijuana scattered across a field near Yuma, Arizona. After a little more nosing around, they also found an empty carbon dioxide tank. Their conclusion: Mexican drug smugglers are now using pneumatic cannons — essentially larger cousins of the devices used in sports arenas — to shoot their wares at least 500 feet into the U.S.
Of course, in this case, the goodies being shot are not T-shirts but 2.5-pound cans of pot, with a collective street value of about $42,500. This engineering advance represents a pretty big leap forward from one of the smugglers' earlier efforts, says Adam Martin at New York — a primitive catapult mounted on the roof of a van. The can-shooting cannons are also suspiciously similar to ones built on the TV show Mythbusters, another possible inspiration. "Cartels are a force for evil, sure, but dreaming up ways to propel packages of weed over a border fence must be one of the most fun jobs in the organization," says Martin. "Probably the only one."
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