Bundles of Drugs Keep Washing Up in South Florida

Last month, a beachgoer in Palm Beach stumbled upon 65 pounds of cocaine along the shoreline, a find worth $1.5 million. But that hasn't been an isolated incident in South Florida, where people continue to discover packages of drugs in the water and on local beaches, especially in the Florida Keys of late. A US Border Patrol spokesman tells the Miami Herald that a bundle of coke, weighing about 2.5 pounds, was found on the shores of Islamorada on Wednesday, followed by a similar package discovered the very next day. Citizens found both packages near the area's Founders Park, a 40-acre community hub. Those two finds aren't isolated incidents: Earlier this week, anglers found another 2.5-pound package of cocaine in Lower Matecumbe Key, while at the beginning of May, a boater near Marathon in the Middle Keys found a sack filled with 62 pounds of pot.

Meanwhile, other boaters at the end of April found a sack off of Key Largo that held dozens of cocaine packages, weighing about 73 pounds. CBS Miami and the Herald note multiple other drug finds that stretch back to last summer, including 50 pounds of cocaine that washed up on the shores of Grassy Key in July; a total of 30 pounds of marijuana that turned up in Key Largo and Big Pine Key in October; and 74 pounds of cocaine found by a fisherman off the coast of Sugarloaf Key in December. Unilad notes that while it's not clear where the most recent spate of drugs are coming from, drug smugglers from the Caribbean and Cuba have long been known to travel up the Florida coast to try to get drugs into the US. (More Florida Keys stories.)