Slightly off topic, but as someone who hopes to sail around the world one day, I can't wait for 3D drug printing to arrive. Boats are often left unattended and with every other cruiser announcing their planned route on a blog, I am amazed so few get in troubles for unknowingly transporting drugs planted by some drug smugglers. Maybe it's the lack of speed that makes them unattractive.
Some of the narco-sub stuff in incredibly impressive given the constraints they're working under. They might spend ~$5M on a single-use vessel, knowing it's going to be maybe 1-2% of the total value of the trip, and the risk of re-use is too great.
I'm curious how UUV (unmanned/autonomous underwater vehicle) tech might change the economics of that; certainly you could improve on the eggs/basket metric if you could bring the cost/size/detectability down.
For your cruising theory; I wonder just how hard it would be to build a magnetic/quickset-epoxy limpet-mine type construction that can hold a few 10's of Kg of payload.
Bonus points for ruggedised GPS+satphone so you can track it, and perhaps even instruct it to detach and inflate buoyancy compensator 10-20m underwater til you come collect.
My boat's hull is fiberglass, but the keel is pig iron and now I'm picturing leaving some Mexican port (let's say headed for San Diego) and having one of your magnetic mines attach as I turn north, then drop off somewhere near the SD harbor.
I'm guessing you could more easily target cargo ships since you know (or can find out where they're headed) and you also know they'll use marked channels. There's no reason the buoyancy compensator couldn't be used to park the shipment until a ship headed the right direction passed over it.
This was done in Australia and they were caught. 90% of drug seizures are a result of intelligence gathering rather than search.
I listened to a talk from the former head of a customs agency who admitted that search alone is useless in stopping the flow of contraband. He described it as searching for a needle in a haystack in a haystack.
The intelligence turns out to be a good method. It is difficult to import multiple kilograms of a drug into a major city and not make noise about it. First you have the concern of anybody in the lower end of the pyramid being caught, and second there is the competition who are usually more than happy to rat you out to get rid of you.
I'm willing to bet that even the case of the professor in OP was a result of intelligence. There are two common ways couriers are caught in South America:
* the first is that they are turned in by the organization that has sent them. As part of police corruption and keeping locals out of prisons they setup foreigners.
* the second is signature detection. It turns out that a lot of organizations use the same types of suitcases. I bet it was the type of suitcase he was carrying that prompted them to search.
I have no doubts the drug lords can up with plety of 'innovations' if they wanted to start abusing sailboat cruisers on a large scale. Short of ending the insane war on drugs the best thing to hope for is other tech being more economical (UUV as you mention) or disruptive of the entire system (3D printing of drugs).
I think that the reason we do not hear much about such things is either:
1- The 'drug mine' is wildly successful and has not been caught by the authorities yet
or
2- People intelligent enough to be building such devices found less risky and more profitable avenues for their skills. i.e.: criminals are not smart and that's why they are criminals.
I think there's also possibility (3) - the cost or effort of a "drug mine" is higher than existing methods, which work relatively well.
I mean, drugs are clearly getting into the US, and proper organizational structure in your criminal enterprise means that mules and runners getting pinched every once in a while is just a cost of doing business.
I may be prejudiced, but I think that criminals (that get caught) are stupid only in 1st world. If you go to poor countries such as Bolivia, or even Mexico, you'll find that the criminal cartels employ some very, very smart people with ingenuity.
