Awesome business model:
U.S. customs officials have seized a statue of Jesus Christ made from plaster mixed with cocaine -- the latest sophisticated attempt to smuggle drugs from Mexico.
This is hardly "sophisticated". People have been smuggling drugs by mixing it with other materials for a long time. My favorite example is the progression of techniques smugglers have employed to bring it in via boat. Originally, they'd stash the stuff in the hold, run like hell and hope not to get stopped. Then they started creating secret compartments to hide it in, but the cops then started bringing dogs on board. The smugglers then moved to building a boat around the cargo, by first creating a hull, lining it with bricks of coke, and then layering a second hull over that. The Coast Guard then adopted the use of underwater radar that could look for air gaps within the hull. Then the traffickers started mixing the coke in with the fiberglass that they made the hull with. And so on.
Even so, Cocaine Jesus provides a good case study of the failure of the War on Drugs:
Sniffer dogs at the border crossing in Laredo, Texas, alerted officials to the smell of narcotics in the 6.6 pound (3 kilo) statue, which was in the trunk of a car being driven by a Mexican woman into the United States last week. ...
U.S. border police arrested a 61-year-old Mexican man accused of offering the woman $80 to carry the statue to the bus station in downtown Laredo.
The woman escaped back to Mexico ... .
They would have dissolved the statute in a solvent and precipitated out the coke. Let's say just for laughs that the statue contained only half a kilo of product. Consider:
The average price of a gram of pure cocaine in the United States is around $130, according to U.S. government data.
So using my assumption, that single, seven-pound statue had $65,000 worth of product. Not bad for one trip.
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