Weed Hurler: soldiers bust pot catapult.

• Author: Brokaw, Josh
• Position: Citings - Brief article

THE WAR ON Drugs has turned much of northern Mexico into cartel-controlled fiefdoms. Now drug lords are looking to their feudal predecessors for weaponry adaptable to the smuggling trade. On January 26, Mexican soldiers seized a nine-foot-tall, trailer-mounted catapult that hurled four-and-a-half-pound marijuana packets over the Arizona border.

Terry Nelson, a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), spent three decades in the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Department of Homeland Security. He says the catapult idea is new. Yet the nearby presence of a camera tower makes Nelson suspicious that smugglers intended to distract...