It's not like drug cartels are Dr. No like enterprises...
Its non-trivial building these submarines and most competent engineers would balk at being asked to, explaining they were not competent enough.
Don't mistake a lack of polish, fanfare and machined parts for primitive as in easy to make work.
But what about, well, drugs? Don't drug cartels employ chemists to refine old drugs and develop "better" ones?
No, of course not :). The point was about crime organizations hiring elite specialists to do high-tech research for them.
They mostly iterate on known drugs to make their making cheaper / more addictive. And they can easily test on junkies (I presume).
Of course, sometimes they get it wrong, and you end up with face flesh eating humans in Florida.
Citation?
Also, I don't own a TV, don't watch TV, and get my news from friends and NPR. So I don't generally see much of this news-of-the-wierd. Thankfully, it appears.
During years EPO wasn't detectable by anti-doping testing. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think it requires cutting edge pharmaceutical drug research to avoid detection.