Cocaine Bear: The true story of a bear addicted to cocaine

Would a bear that had reportedly swallowed a brick of cocaine go on a rampage, attacking a group of people who are—understandably—terrified? That’s the premise of the movie *Cocaine Bear*, set to be released in February 2023:

«A ragtag group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teenagers converge on a forest in Georgia, where a 225-kilo black bear is on a murderous rampage after accidentally ingesting cocaine.»

But beyond the screenplay that Jean-Jacques Annaud might have written for *Hyper Tension* (Crank (starring Jason Statham), *Cocaine Bear* is based on a true story.

The True Story of the Cocaine-Addicted Bear

An Associated Press (AP) article from 1985, simply titled «Cocaine and a Dead Bear,» reports that a 79-kilo black bear died in Georgia from a cocaine overdose after consuming an unidentified amount of cocaine dropped from a plane piloted by a convicted drug trafficker.

The original article about the cocaine-addicted bear

The smuggler reportedly died later while skydiving with a load that was too heavy. «The call was received from an elderly man who called the dispatch center to say there was someone in his yard who didn’t seem to be moving, and that the police should be sent to the scene to see what was going on,» said an investigator on the original case to WGN Radio.

Citing an official from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), a longer AP article describes the deceased as a former Kentucky narcotics investigator who fell to his death in Tennessee.

As for the bear, investigators were searching for cocaine that had been dropped in the mountains about 130 kilometers north of Atlanta and just south of the Tennessee border when they discovered «a torn-open shipment of the pungent powder and the remains of a bear.».

«The bear got to it before we did; it tore open the travel bag, took some cocaine, and overdosed,» the GBI official reportedly said. «All that’s left are bones and a large hide,» he noted, adding that it appeared the animal had been dead for about a month.

The travel bag and 40 packages containing approximately one kilogram of cocaine—which had been torn open and scattered across a hillside—were discovered near the bear’s remains. At the time, authorities estimated that the 40 kilograms of cocaine could be worth up to 20 million U.S. dollars, adding that three similar discoveries involving identical travel bags had been made in Georgia.

The bear, the plane, the pilot, and the cargo were found in various locations, the AP reports. The bear’s remains were discovered in Georgia, the smuggler’s body in Tennessee, and his unmanned Cessna plane—which had crashed into a mountain—in North Carolina.

Now stuffed, the bear—which has been named Pablo Eskobear—is a tourist attraction at the «Kentucky For Kentucky» store in Lexington.

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