Utah Woman Discovers Cocaine Hidden in Tampons

May 4, 2012 — -- A Utah woman was shocked when she discovered cocaine inside of tampons she purchased and police are investigating whether the discovery could be connected to a larger smuggling scheme.

Cindy Davidson, 39, went to an NPS Store in Salt Lake City in search of a bargain. The store is described as "a salvage and freight recovery company" on its website.

On Saturday, while shopping at the NPS Store with her sister, she spotted the box of 16-count Boots tampons for $1.99.

"On Sunday, I went to use one and inside the plastic applicator was cellophane with the cocaine wrapped in it," Davidson said. "I didn't know it was cocaine. It was just white powder to me."

The cotton piece of the tampon had been removed and replaced with the white powder.

"After I examined it, I was thinking, that's so weird. Are these so old that the cotton disintegrated into powder?" she said. "I thought, there's something so strange about this. Then I stopped opening because I started thinking maybe it was a terrorist attack."

Davidson called her sister to tell her what she had found and said she was thinking of calling the manufacturer on Monday. Her sister thought she should call the police, just in case, so she did.

"Hazmat came and did their test and told me they were taking the product," she said. "Later, police knocked on my door and said it was cocaine."

"I was floored. I really didn't know what to think," Davidson said.

The Salt Lake City Police Department is investigating the situation and looking into whether the incident could be related to a larger smuggling scheme.

"It's possible, but we don't know at this point," Detective Carlie Wiechman, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City Police Department, told ABCNews.com. "It's so early in the investigation; it could be a onetime thing or could lead to something bigger. We have no idea the scale of this."

Wiechman could not specify exactly how much cocaine was found, but Davidson said the tampons could hold a lot of power since they were of the super-absorbency variety.

Davidson has not contacted the store or sought a refund, but will no longer buy tampons from NPS Store.

The store did not respond to a request for comment from ABCNews.com.

"It's not every day we run across this," Wiechman said. "We run across different ways of packaging and distributing, but it never ceases to amaze us the different, creative ways of [dealers] trying to move drugs around."

This incident is the second recent scare involving tampons. In March, a Texas blogger discovered mold on tampons she had purchased from a grocery store weeks earlier.