Photos of drug smuggling attempts

My favorite government publication is the Drug Enforcement Administration's Microgram Bulletin. It deals chiefly with the novel ways drug dealers market, promote, and camouflage their products to avoid detection.

The rewards for being a high-level drug dealer are great, precisely because the punishment for failure (imprisonment or getting rubbed out by a rival) is equally great. In this harsh environment, dealers go to great lengths to conceal their products during storage and shipment.

The photos of confiscated drugs in Microgram Bulletin are good examples of dealer ingenuity, but remember: these are the guys who got caught. Tons of drugs move across borders around the clock, and the best smugglers are hiding them in ways that the DEA hasn't wised up to yet.

Picture 4-10 HEROIN-LACED BATTING IN FURNITURE (FROM VENEZUELA) IN MIAMI, FLORIDA

The DEA Southeast Laboratory (Miami, Florida) recently received 23 bags of grey colored batting that had been removed from two pieces of upholstered furniture, suspected to be laced with heroin (see Photo 11). The furniture (a chair and sofa) had been shipped from Venezuela, and was seized at the Miami Airport by Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. Analysis of extracts from the batting (total net mass 62.16 kilograms) by GC/MS and FTIR confirmed 14 percent heroin hydrochloride, equivalent to approximately 8.7 kilograms total net mass. This was the first submission of this type to the Southeast Laboratory.

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