I can’t resist the pedantic urge to point out that “drug smuggling” shouldn’t be hyphenated.
“Members of the drug-smuggling cartel were involved in drug smuggling.”
They [security] are in the perfect position for collusion and theft, with little oversight this should be zero surprise that they are thieves and smugglers.
I think the “simulated coke” is filler. For example the fake coke that is often snorted on movies is actually what is used as filler in real coke when deals cut down the purity of the drug down.
If I remember my federal jury duty correctly, the statutes cover both the actual drug component and the fillers. However, the indictment will specify what the net kilogram is out of total substance (drug plus filler) that’s seized.
The airport “screenings” (is that what we’re calling body-searches these days?) are only legal because they are explicitly limited to searching for weapons, explosives, and incendiaries. By law, the “screeners” can’t be looking for anything else.
Ironically, if the “screeners” had simply been doing their jobs within Constitutional constraints, the drugs should have gone right through anyway. The charging document goes through lots of painful pro-forma contortions to skirt this issue.
No matter. In another 15 years, no one will remember that these airport checkpoints weren’t initially intended to be all-purpose law-enforcement dragnets.
“Simulated cocaine” suggests the possibility of undercover police business – “smuggling” this “simulated cocaine” as part of … whatever it is that undercover police agencies do with “simulated cocaine”.
At the end of the article it says that all the smuggling was done with the knowledge of DEA and TSA and using undercover agents. So maybe they really are horrible smuggler bad people or it’s like the FBI terrorism busts where nothing was happening until the FBI undercover guy talked some doofuses into stepping over the line.
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