A high fatal postmortem blood concentration of cocaine in a drug courier

A fatality in a teenage drug courier who swallowed multiple packages of a controlled drug for concealment in the gastrointestinal tract is described. There were a couple of burst-open short cylindrical packages of cocaine and several with damaged external latex wrapping. A hazardous breakage or leakage has been considered unlikely with similar type of cocaine packages otherwise. The deceased succumbed to a remarkably high fatal postmortem blood cocaine concentration of 104 mg/l, having curiously survived the usual lethal range for cocaine toxicity. The phenomenon of postmortem release and redistribution of drugs and spontaneous biodegradation of cocaine which may confound the postmortem toxicology is briefly discussed. There is a comparable forensic problem in estimating the time of drug ingestion from the rate of gastric emptying or transit in the gut as a crude guide to deduce the time of death.