Mexican drug smugglers catapult weed over border fence into US

A remote video surveillance system captured drug smugglers using a catapult to launch packages of pot over the Mexico/US border. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, US National Guard troops coordinated with Mexican authorities to halt the operation.

Video and story at local TV station KVOA, Tucson, Arizona.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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benher

Didn’t Wyle E. Coyote try something like this? It would seem that the Acme Corporation is the only winner in this endless war on drugs…
- Jack
  
  You know technically Levi Strauss & Company is the longest lasting benefactor of the gold rush.
  
  Makes you think!
  - EH
    
    You know technically Levi Strauss & Company is the longest lasting benefactor of the gold rush.
    
    Wells Fargo was founded the year before, in 1852.
BDiamond

Is it bad that I find the whole idea funny as hell?
Skillator

A few bucks just made the entire recent Fast & the Furious movie redundant.
Nadreck

What? No cows?
Utenzil

They were apprehended when Border Patrol agents poured a cauldron of boiling pitch on them.
Anonymous

Maybe they should try a large wooden badger…
Major Variola (ret)

Wait till the unlicensed pharma importers learn about TREBUCHETS.

And then, rocketry.

And ballooning.

I’m in yur base smokin yur weed.

As a longtime stoner who once tossed Estes rockets into trees in upstate prepubescently, I have oftened wondered why not launch a z of coke or somesuch dense-valuable, its gotta be worth it, even with probabilistic intercept, much like Star Wars icbm intercept.

Neither an economist nor rocket scientist,
cheers
Major Variola (ret)

@AT203

Almost lost it, thanks.
Major Variola (ret)

@BDiamond

You must flog yourself. The Noodly one requires it. Or not.
- BDiamond
  
  Yea, I shall punish my too, too solid flesh with a No Yolks Wide Egg Noodle, knowing that He has boiled for my sins and that the sauce is good. Then shall the starchy repast be shared and digested. R’Amen.
irksome

Did they get the idea from Infinite Jest?
irksome

Catapot.

“It’s called a trebu… a treba… it flings shit, man.”
- The Chemist
  
  So do chimpanzees.
  - irksome
    
    My point, exactly.
    
    Gawd, I hate potheads. And as an ex-junkie, I am allowed to say that.
    - Headbone
      
      Gawd I hate self righteous ex-junkies.
      
      As a practicing alcoholic, I’m allowed to say that.
      - DoctressJulia
        
        Word to that! XD
Anonymous

This seems like an appropriate use of “green” technology to me.
kevinupstairs

Are we certain that this wasn’t some sort of apology from Mexico for the whole illegal immigration thing?

America doesn’t know how to accept a gift.
Anonymous

I knew that it was only a matter of time before that new partnership between MAKE and NORML got in trouble.
Anonymous

Puff, puff, launch. Manners matter.
bobthecitizen

Now if they had drawn “angry birds” on the packages it would have been truly epic.
rebdav

It amazes me that once moving or consuming drugs comes into play the dimmest bong head becomes Mcgyver crossed with Thomas Edison, not a pretty picture imagining that happening.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I’m LMAO at that image. Should’ve stopped at MacGyver, though. Damn near had the win.
- jackie31337
  
  Not only that, it seems to be the only way to get Americans to use and accept the metric system. The average American would probably have no idea just how much a kilogram is, but a drug dealer or a supplier is almost certain to know.
HubrisSonic

do they light it first?
- DoctressJulia
  
  WAAHAAAA!! That made me burst out cackling. And, I’m not even high yet! :D
Anonymous

ok i was gonna do this if i ever turned into a dope smuggler or something of the like but as i dont think thats ever gonna happen:

why dont u just get one of those helicopters u can maneuver with ur iphone , attach mirrors to the outside so its hardly visible from the ground, and then fly over the drugs, obv under radar height. ….

its easy.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Perhaps you should manufacture one and submit your design to MAKE.
  - Anonymous
    
    that thought crossed my mind but i didnt want to give the cartels another way to kill people (armed drones)
- Jack
  
  ok i was gonna do this if i ever turned into a dope smuggler or something of the like but as i dont think thats ever gonna happen:
  
  why dont u just get one of those helicopters u can maneuver with ur iphone , attach mirrors to the outside so its hardly visible from the ground, and then fly over the drugs, obv under radar height. ….
  
  its easy.
  
  FTW!
gwailo_joe

This reminds me of an idea my friend and I had, sometime after high school around 1995 or so:

The Resume Trebuchet.

“In these tough times, it gets harder and harder for your name to rise above the buzz. . .

What better way. . .than the Resume Trebuchet!”

Just fill the basket with up-to-date resumes, point at downtown; and let fly!

of course now that I think about it, one would need some type of exploding shell or dissolving capsule to get all that paper very far at all. . .

but since we were indeed smoking weed and drinking Seagrams 7 out of the plastic bottle at the time, I suppose we can be excused for not ironing out all of the kinks. . .
Alvis

This would make an awesome smartphone game.
Anonymous

mexico should annex us and canada.
bat21

Only people who smoke weed would think of something like this.
- Jack
  
  Kind of makes you think: Maybe all of those asteroids heading towards Earth are just huge galactic bundles of weed some space stoner is tossing to Earth to try and mellow us out from wars and shit. WHOA!
  - brundlfly
    
    There is indeed such a theory already in place: in “The Food of the Gods” by Terrance McKenna he puts forth the proposition that intelligence is directly correlated to the first herders eating the mushrooms off of the cow patties from their herds. Furthermore, this gift of intelligence was “seeded” on this planet, because those particular mushrooms contain an element not naturally occurring on this planet, and only exists here due to asteroids.
ill lich

“You put your weed in there!”

Lo siento. . .

“Pones tu hierba alla!”
emo hex

You know the U.S. Post Office could learn a thing or two from this.
Our mail could be delivered this way, each house could have a large basket
and the main post office in town would have this catapult . . .
CheechChong

I’m surprised that they did not use this in the movie “Up in Smoke”.
mdh

Cannapult?
- Anonymous
  
  haha nice.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  ooh nice.
lectroid

MYTHBUSTERS!!!
Anonymous

You can rest assured they’re not catapulting a strain of White Widow across the fence. What a waste of time on skanky dirtwee.
bpratt

Wheeeeeeeeeeed!
bassplayinben

Trebuchet
- Anonymous
  
  Sadly, it looks like it’s a conventional spring-powered catapult, not the much cooler gravity-driven trebuchet.
  - professor
    
    The benefit of a spring-powered trebuchet is the “BONG” noise it makes when fired!
AT203

This seems like the kinda idea that you come up with when you are high.
Anonymous

They should use a Trojan donkey
Mira

Forget blowing all this money on fences, drones, cameras, etc. Lets just annex both Canada and Mexico and be done with it.

That way, you can be stoned enough not to really mind the wait, for your nationalized health-care!

done and done. Probably at a savings. ;)
Anonymous

Have you used a catapult… ON WEED?
oddboyout

They need to watch that pumpkin chucking show for some tips.
mgfarrelly

Feh, that’s nothing. Get back to me when they start using a trebuchet.
- nem0fazer
  
  Pretty sure that’s a trebuchet at the end of the video.
OhMeadhbh

i swear i just saw this episode on mythbusters. but why buy mexican weed when you could buy local grown? (she says, supporting local santa cruz county businesses)
Johnny Blaze

Angry Cocaine Birds.
Jardine

The catapult operators and the people grabbing the packages on the other side still both have to be relatively close to the fence. Why not just go up to the fence and toss the weed over?
Anonymous

In 5 years, this model will be perfected, and people will be catapulted right onto a lawn, miles away from the Border agency!
jfrancis

I had a screenplay idea once (who doesn’t) that involved as a plot point a mass driver that could land payloads in a swimming pool much, much farther across the border.
Anonymous

Boing Boing!