Huge Quantities of Cocaine Discovered in Coca-Cola Shipment

In the 19th century, the Coca-Cola company used small quantities of cocaine to give their soda an addictive kick. However, they discontinued its use around the turn of the 20th century, and it’s now been over 100 years since the company used actual cocaine to pep up their caffeinated product. But employees at a Coca-Cola factory discovered a surprising blast from the past this week when they opened a shipment of Coca-Cola brand orange juice and found not concentrated juice powder, but cocaine.

The BBC reports that workers at the factory, located in southern France, found about 816 pounds of cocaine hidden in a concentrated orange juice shipment from South America. Prosecutor Xavier Tarabeux told the BBC that the massive cocaine shipment “has a street value of 50 million euros” and called the discovery—one of the largest drug shipments ever discovered in France—“a very bad surprise.”

The employees immediately called the police, who are now investigating how the cocaine ended up in France. Investigator Jean-Denis Malgras told news site Var-Matin that the factory’s employees had already been ruled out as the culprits.

[h/t BBC]

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