Cocaine Bear (bear)

On September 11, 1985, former Lexington police department narcotics officer turned drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II was trafficking cocaine from Colombia into the United States. After dropping off a shipment in Blairsville, Georgia, Thornton and an accomplice, Bill Leonard,[6] departed in a self-piloted Cessna 404 Titan. En route, the duo dropped a load of 40 plastic containers of cocaine into the wilderness before abandoning the plane above Knoxville, Tennessee. Allegedly, Thornton was killed when his parachute failed to open. According to the FBI, Thornton dumped his cargo because the load of two men, in addition to the cocaine, was too heavy for the plane to carry.

On December 23, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported finding a dead black bear that had eaten a large amount of the cocaine from the jettisoned containers.[7][8] The containers had held about 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of cocaine, valued at $20 million (equivalent to $54.4 million in 2022), and by the time the scene was studied by government authorities, all of the containers had been ripped open, with their contents scattered.[2][9][10] The chief medical examiner from the Georgia State Crime Lab, Dr. Kenneth Alonso, stated that its stomach was "literally packed to the brim with cocaine",[11] although he estimated the bear had absorbed only 3 to 4 grams into its bloodstream at the time of its death.[12][13]

Dr. Alonso did not want to waste the body of the bear, so he had it taxidermied and gave it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. The bear, however, disappeared until it emerged again in a pawn shop. Eventually it made its way to the "Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall" in Lexington, Kentucky, where it remains to this day.[12] It has been alleged that the bear kept in Lexington is not the same bear that died in Georgia, but rather another, unrelated bear, due to the fact that the original bear was in a state of decomposition, although the mall maintains that the bear is the original.[14]

According to the bear's owners, the Cocaine Bear has the authority to officiate legally binding weddings in the mall where it is kept due to Kentucky's marriage laws.[3] This claim is only partly true; the bear does not have the authority to solemnize weddings, but the state of Kentucky cannot invalidate marriages performed by unqualified persons if the parties believe that the person marrying them has the authority to do so.[15] As such, it is a belief in the Cocaine Bear's authority that allows it to officiate legally binding weddings in Kentucky.

On March 9, 2021, Universal Pictures announced that a film, Cocaine Bear, would be directed by Elizabeth Banks.[16] The film takes significant liberties—while the events which occurred between the bear's ingestion of cocaine and its death are not known,[11] the bear is not known to have caused any deaths, unlike the film portrayed.[2] The film was released on February 24, 2023.[17] Coinciding with the release of the film, Peacock created a documentary film titled Cocaine Bear: The True Story about the bear.[5]

• List of individual bears