The film 'Cocaine Bear', airing on Channel 4 at 9.30pm tonight, is based on the true story of a 200-pound black bear that died after ingesting a massive quantity of cocaine. The bear's stomach was 'packed to the brim' with the drug, according to the medical examiner who performed the necropsy. 'There isn't a mammal on the planet that could survive that,' he said, listing cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hyperthermia, renal failure, heart failure, and stroke as the cause of death.
The incident occurred in 1985 during the 'Bluegrass Conspiracy' era, named after Sally Denton's book. Andrew Thornton, a former narcotics officer turned drug lord, bailed out of an aircraft mid-flight over the United States. He had been piloting a drug run from Colombia and dropped 40 plastic containers filled with cocaine into Chattahoochee National Forest. Thornton became entangled in his parachute and died in Knoxville, Tennessee.
When officers retraced his path, they expected to find a drugs haul valued at $15 million (£11 million). Instead, they discovered 40 opened containers and one dead black bear. Investigators reported no threatening or destructive behaviour by the cocaine-fuelled bear before its death. It is not thought that anyone made off with the remainder of the stash; the bear only consumed some of it.
Following the post-mortem, the bear was stuffed and passed through several owners, including allegedly country singer Waylon Jennings. Local business Kentucky for Kentucky traced the bear and installed it at the Kentucky Fun Mall in north Lexington, where it remains today. Thornton's drug operations were extensive; investigators found many more duffel bags of drugs dumped throughout rural Georgia and Tennessee, and it was discovered that he and his associates had smuggled 880 pounds of cocaine into the US.
