According to WPTV Kansas, that’s what happened to Sophia Stockton, a junior at Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe.

Apparently, Stockton purchased the book through Amazon’s Warehouse Deals program, where shoppers can “get deep discounts on open-box, like-new, refurbished, or used products that are in good condition but do not meet Amazon.com’s rigorous standards as ‘new.’” When she opened it up and a baggie of white powder fell out, she initially thought it might be anthrax.

Ironically enough, the textbook that contained the cocaine was called “Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues.”

She notified the local police department, who ran an analysis on the substance:

Warehouse Deals was created by Amazon to easily move products that aren’t quite showroom quality. It functions like any other “Fulfilled by Amazon” merchant. Amazon specifically says that items that come through Warehouse Deals are inspected carefully:

Prior to offering an item for sale on Warehouse Deals, we verify physical and functional condition.

Amazon says that any product that customers find unsatisfactory can be returned within 30 days for a full refund. I doubt Miss Stockton is unsatisfied with her textbook once she found out it wasn’t full of a biological warfare agent.

She told GardnerEdge: “I have ordered many times from Amazon and this is the first time I’ve seen anything like this. I don’t think that Amazon is at fault in this case. They can’t check every book that goes through their warehouse. I’m guessing that it (the cocaine) was just left in there by the previous owner of the book.”

Or some inspector is really bummed out. I wonder, how many other college students would have called the police?

These are boardroom type questions – queries for suits and bean counters and gamers. But, from a reasonable distance, it makes one wonder if they’re over-thinking it.

Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, is concerned with filtering. Because, really, you don’t want your travel guide advertisement popping up next to a guide to New York cocaine bars.

Even then, you wonder how many people notice and how many people (other than the advertisers care.

The rest of the panel, which includes, bigwigs from Avenue A/Razorfish (kings of the surreal), Art Sindlinger of Starcom, and MasterCard, seemed torn on production costs.

Like any creative endeavor, when salesmen and suits get involved, it’s ruined. Like any creative pursuit, success is 90% imagination, 5% placement, and 5% timing. Great things don’t go anywhere because of bad timing, mediocre things take off for the opposite reason.

The Celestine Prophecy, anyone? Not exactly a triumph of literature, but caught the right wave.

So the 90-5-5 formula I put out there is completely arbitrary (and you should have called me on that already), because it seems to me this type of discussion surrounds arbitrary topics. What catches, catches. What doesn’t doesn’t. It’s almost all intuition.

And suits hate that. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, measuring something changes it.

But if we have to have something – something more tangible than "you just gotta feel it" – to go on, we can turn to YouTube for our data, to see what scores and what doesn’t.

Paris Hilton’s channel when she launched her (abysmal) pop song was met with some concern as YouTubers complained their beloved space would be invaded by marketers. One commentator complained the music video was too polished, too Madison Avenue.

They like it raw; they like it real; they like something they can connect with. (In Paris’s case, watch it catch fire for the opposite reason, as she scoots out of jail for bogus reasons, while the po’ folks serve their time.)

Alright, so we know how not to be – salesy and invasive. (Door-to-door may work an acceptable percentage of the time, because it’s hard to shut the door in someone’s face. If it’s just a click that makes the annoyance go away, it’s a different story.) But what scores on YouTube?

The all-time most viewed list shows us patterns that we should recognize already. The people like music, sex, and laughter – if all at the same time, so be it. The top 10, which seems to belie a bit the unwashed masses preference for raw reality, are:

1.    Evolution of Dance, viewed 49.9 million times.

2.    Avril Lavigne’s "Girlfriend," viewed 33.3 million times.

3.    My Chemical Romance’s "Famous Last Words," viewed 29.3 million times.

4.    Pokemon Theme Music Video, viewed 24.5 million times.

5.    SNL’s "A Special Christmas Box," viewed 22.6 million times.

6.    Guitar (guy on bed playing guitar), viewed 21.7 million times.

7.    OK Go’s "Here It Goes Again," viewed 18.1 million times.

8.    Quick Change Artists on America’s Got Talent, viewed 17.8 million times.

9.    Porn XXX (actually a My Little Pony cartoon), viewed by 17 million suckers.

10.    Hahaha (a baby laughing), viewed 16.2 million times.

So while that shows what type of entertainment YouTubers really value, what about videos that are closer to true advertising? My favorite example is the "Will It Blend?" series, where a seller demonstrates a blender by chopping up an iPod, golf balls, marbles, pens, a rake handle, hockey pucks, you name it.

Simple, transparent, direct, a little violent, with a nice punch from the wow-factor. The "Will It Blend?" series hit its peak with the iPod blending, viewed 3.6 million times – not bad for a blender commercial. 

The ad is covered in a thick layer of irony, informing its target market that the Times is the "ultimate guide to global travel," advising on:

Where to Stay; Where to Eat; What to Do; When to Go

It appeared above an article posted on the travel section of GridSkipper.com, a Gawker Media site. The article was titled "New York Coke Bars."

If you’re the temperance-minded, you may already be wondering what’s wrong with Coca-Cola, or the soda-jerk joints that serve it. That association would be quickly displaced upon seeing the graphic accompanying the article featuring a mirror with a powder line and a rolled-up dollar bill. 

It becomes clear this is a guide to "some of the city’s favorite indoor skiing," sponsored by the New York Times. And if you, the cokehead reader, know any blow-friendly bars that Amanda Kludt, the writer of the piece, forgot to mention, be sure to let GridSkipper know.

Just make sure it hasn’t been mentioned in the comments section. Commentator "Wasp vs. Stryper" was appalled at the list’s incompleteness, reminding Kludt of The Annex, The Dark Room, 200 Orchard, 205, The Box, and Thor, all of which can be expected to be raided next week.

Regardless of the ironic hilarity of it, it seems doubtful that the NYT would openly endorse public cocaine use – unless there’s an editorial I’ve missed. The Village Voice, maybe, High Times, but the NY Times, established paper of record for the greatest city on Earth and most widely-respected news organization anywhere?

Though contextual advertising is most definitely the future in this industry, and a huge organization like the Times can absorb accidental associations, smaller, more sensitive advertisers would probably be quite upset having their priceless brand names associated with the urban nightclub drug subculture.

So, needless to say, but it’s going to be said anyway, artificial intelligence has a ways to go yet before it can recognize certain moral and cultural nuances with enough skill to choose which ads are appropriate. Google says they’ve gotten quite good at this.

Doubleclick, the digital advertiser the NYT went through for this placement, apparently has some problem solving to address – even if artificial intelligence is really, really hard.