In England, cannabis sweets are offered on social media en masse. Sky News reports this after an investigation. Substances are added to candies from well-known brands that make people high. The British authorities are concerned about the youth.
To make the cannabis candies not stand out, drug dealers use the packaging material of well-known candy brands such as Haribo, Skittles and Oreo. Some packaging is specially adapted to promote the weed candies. For example, a drug dealer has changed the name ‘Oreo’ on the packaging to ‘Stoneo’.
Cannabis sweets packaged to look like bags of Haribo and Skittles are being widely sold and promoted on mainstream social media sites, Sky News has found.
Read more here: https://t.co/3kS3AtqoeX pic.twitter.com/YBe9z0GLnp
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 21, 2022
The candies in the bags are illegal because of a high dose of, for example, THC, which makes you stoned. Candies with the substance CBD have also been discovered. British police tell Sky News that the drugs are almost indistinguishable from normal sweets. “Because these drugs are promoted as sweets, they appear to be intended for children. It is therefore worrying if they fall into the wrong hands.”
It is not without reason that the British police are concerned about young people. Six children have already been hospitalized after eating the cannabis candies. One child was only eight years old.
Intelligence from @_ERSOU, shared exclusively with Sky News, suggests both boys and girls under the age of 18 are consuming cannabis edibles – primarily those of secondary school age pic.twitter.com/W98QzZGt7e
— Sky News (@SkyNews) September 21, 2022
British police forces call the situation problematic. Children are easily exposed to drugs as it is sold through social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram. The authorities are also afraid that the step to dealing drugs will become easier for young people.
In a response to Sky News, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, among others, says that they are working with the police and youth organizations to combat drug trafficking via social media. The company is proactively removing this type of content.
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