May 1910, the Mexican government approached President Taft's Secretary of State, Philander Knox, to regulate aerial smuggling across the U.S. southern border. Ostensibly to control tariff violations, the Mexican government had a clear interest in suppressing the movement of aircraft and aerial mercenaries from the United States in support of revolutionaries and bandits. However, most American observers recognized the problem of smuggling over the southern border as less of a problem in international relations than as a remarkably novel development in the debate between protectionism and free markets. The Washington Post asked, "Are airships destined to break down tariff barriers and make trade between the United States and Mexico or Canada as free as it is between the States of the Union?" Most significantly, the negotiations that occurred between the U.S. and Mexico identified aircraft registration as essential to the process.12 The first documented aerial smuggling occurred in March 1911 when Italian aviator Antonio Smeroglio crashed while carrying "dutiable goods" over the Mount Cenis pass after penetrating the French border. Despite breaking two legs and his collar bone, he survived to be taken into custody.13 Given that the first operational military use of an airplane did not occur until seven months later, the forgotten Smeroglio is due for recognition as one of the first aviators to demonstrate the practicality of heavier-than-air flight in an operational context.14

The Scope of Aerial Smuggling Only a month after the armistice in 1918, accounts of aerial bootlegging were generating public commentary and legislative action. Rumors emerged of smuggling into newly dry Florida, which prompted the specific targeting of airplanes by the state legislature, which also encouraged newly-dry Ohio to follow suit.15 West Virginia and Michigan also engaged with the problem of aerial smuggling before the onset of federal Prohibition.16 Wisconsin saw the potential of the airplane as a flying saloon where imbibers could venture to avoid earthly laws and began their only legislative response.17 Federal concerns followed shortly thereafter, centered on reports of aerial trafficking across the lower Rio Grande.18 By June 1919, aerial narcotic smuggling had become a serious concern, and by May 1921 alien smuggling had been identified as such a significant problem on the southern border that the Bureau of Immigration had to initiate formal dialogues with the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics to evaluate countermeasures.19