In 2016, a Lexington, Kentucky, gift shop unveiled a taxidermied black bear that had been recovered by the store’s co-owners, Whitt Hyler and Griffin VanMeter. It wasn’t just any taxidermy bear—this is Cocaine Bear. In 1985, this bear overdosed on cocaine dropped by a drug smuggler in Chattahoochee, a story that inspired a movie almost 40 years later. The story goes back to 1985, when a black bear was found dead in the woods after eating roughly $15 million worth of cocaine. Where did a bear get its paws on…
