A New Zealand charity said it unknowingly distributed candy laced with “potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine” after receiving the candy from an unidentified donor. Three people were treated in the hospital after consuming the candies, including a child and a teenager, authorities said.
The Auckland City Mission reported on Wednesday that it is contacting all of the potential recipients of its food parcels to warn them about the laced candy. The Mission, also called Te Tāpui Atawhai, distributes food parcels to low-income families and offers health services in the Auckland area.
The Mission first learned that the sweets may have been tampered with after a recipient called with a concern about the “funny tasting” candy. The charity still had some candies on site that hadn’t gone out in parcels so one of the sweets was brought to the New Zealand Drug Foundation on Tuesday.
Tests found that the candy had 300 times the typical dose of meth in it.
The candy was packaged as a Rinda brand pineapple candy and contained about three grams of meth in it, drug foundation executive director Sarah Helm said, adding that people who consumed the candy reported “a bitter taste and feeling unusual.”
“A common dose to swallow is between 10-25mg, so this contaminated lolly contained up to 300 doses,” she said in a press release. “Swallowing that much methamphetamine is extremely dangerous and could result in death.”
As a precaution, the drug foundation is warning the New Zealand public to not consume any Rinda brand pineapple candy, as authorities “don’t know how widespread these contaminated lollies are.”
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Three people, including a child, a teenager and a Mission staff member, were hospitalized after trying the sweets, Auckland police wrote in a release, noting that the charity worker experienced “symptoms of being affected.” They have since all been discharged.
Police are trying to collect as much of the Rinda brand candy as possible and are urging the public to hand them over. Most of the people police spoke to and retrieved candies from reported spitting them out after experiencing the “unpleasant taste.”
The Auckland City Mission says it received the candy from an unknown member of the public in a sealed, retail-sized package.
“The Mission only accepts commercially manufactured food for inclusion in food parcels and the lollies appeared as such when donated,” the charity wrote. “To say we are devastated is an understatement. We are reliant on the generosity of the public to help support people in need, and we are thankful to everyone who supports us.”
Det. Insp. Glenn Baldwin, who is helping to lead the investigation into the laced candy, told Reuters that there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by the charity.
Instead, police believe that tampered sweets could be the byproduct of an international drug trafficking operation.
“Drug importation is complex and organised criminal groups use a range of measures to evade law enforcement agencies to import these illicit substances into New Zealand and we have seen this before,” Baldwin wrote in a press release.
“Police and our partners work hard to disrupt these illicit concealments from reaching our communities and we hold those responsible, to account.”
It’s still unclear if the donation of the laced candies was an intentional attack. Police say the investigation is still in the early stages.
The laced candy would have had a high street value of about NZ$1,000 per sweet, suggesting that whoever donated the candy to the Auckland mission did so by mistake, New Zealand Drug Foundation spokesperson Ben Birks Ang told The Associated Press.
The New Zealand Drug Foundation urges anyone who has eaten the candy to call 111 immediately and be on the lookout for symptoms including chest pain, a racing heart, seizures, overheating, delirium or loss of consciousness.
The company Rinda says it learned that its candies “may have been misused” after reading New Zealand news reports.
“We want to make it clear that Rinda Food Industries does not use or condone the use of any illegal drugs in our products,” general manager Steven Teh said.