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I can’t say I have any personal experience with smuggling massive amounts of drugs across a large distance, but if I’ve learned anything from Cops, it’s that you want to offload as much of your stash as possible if you attract the attention of law enforcement.
That’s presumably the strategy harnessed by a good chunk of the people responsible for the many, many stories concerning unsuspecting boaters and beachgoers who have stumble across large quantities of illicit substances floating in the ocean or sitting in the sand (including one that resulted in the arrest of a man who couldn’t resist the urge to try to take some home with him).
However, we’ve been treated to a fairly unique twist on that somewhat classic formula thanks to what recently unfolded in France.
According to CBS News, a military jet was tasked with intercepting a plane that had entered restricted airspace over a nuclear power plant earlier this month.
After catching up to the aircraft in question, the Air Force pilot “witnessed very erratic behavior in the cockpit” before the person inside opened up the door and began to toss a number of packages out of the single-seater.
It’s unclear if the suspected smuggler (a Polish citizen with a preexisting criminal record) had any drugs in their possession when they were apprehended after landing at an airstrip in the town of Lanas, although they did find €45,000 ($49,000) inside the cockpit.
However, officials conducted a search in the area under the flight path and recovered a total of 15 packages they believe were thrown from the aircraft containing 66 pounds of a “white powder” that is likely cocaine (they had yet to run an analysis confirming the nature of the substance as of this writing).
I don’t necessarily have a concrete joke to make here, but I’d be remiss if I wrote this entire thing without deploying the term “Cloudy With a Chance of Drugs.”