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Is ‘Cocaine Bear’ Really Based on a True Story?

In 1985 a flying drug smuggler dropped a load of cocaine over a forest in the US state of Georgia. A black bear ate some and sparked a Hollywood film.
Max Daly
London, GB
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Image: Universal Pictures.

The upcoming Cocaine Bear movie does what it says on the tin: it’s all about a bear getting high on cocaine.

“The bear. It fucking did cocaine! A bear. Did. Cocaine!!” a shocked man says in a trailer for the Elizabeth Banks-directed film, which is due to be released next February. “There was a bear,” a boy hiding up a tree tells her mum, “it was FUCKED!” All to the tune of “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. 

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The Universal Pictures film, starring Keri Russell and the late Ray Liotta, is actually based on a real-life event which took place in a forest in the southern US state of Georgia in 1985. 

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Image: New York Times

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the bear’s corpse was found surrounded by opened packs of cocaine which had been deliberately dropped in the area from a Cessna aircraft piloted by drug smuggler Andrew Thornton, an ex-drug cop. 

Wearing night-vision goggles and Gucci loafers, Thornton then parachuted out with 35 kilos of cocaine strapped to his waist, intending to retrieve the other dropped packs later. But he fell to his death and his body, along with the cocaine, two guns and $4,500 in cash, was found in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee. Three months later the dead bear, and duffel bags containing around 130 kilos of cocaine, were found over the state line in Georgia in the Chattahoochee National Forest. 

An autopsy found the 80 kilo bear had absorbed around 3 to 4 grams of the drug into its body, but may have eaten more. 

Would it have gone on a rampage attacking everyone as it does in the upcoming film?

“If it truly was found with a stomach full of cocaine and with the reported concentrations detected then it would have likely died very quickly,” said Ryan Marino, a medical toxicologist, emergency physician and addiction medicine specialist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. “I don’t know if bears enjoy the taste or even the effects of cocaine so I don’t have a good answer for why it would eat so much.”

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The bear, which has been nicknamed “Pablo Escobear”, was stuffed and is now on display wearing a Santa hat at a shopping mall in Lexington, Kentucky.

What makes the film, and the bear’s own Twitter account such a hit is that the public has always been fascinated by animals-on-drugs stories.

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Take the legendary "squirrels on crack", where a gang of the fluffy creatures were allegedly terrifying residents in Brixton, south London after nibbling on rocks of crack they had stolen from dealers' stashes; the famous spider’s webs on drugs pictures, dolphins on LSD, booze monkeys, rats on heroin or even drug smuggling cats.