A charity that helps homeless people in Auckland, New Zealand, has been unwittingly distributing sweets laced with lethal doses of methamphetamine inside food parcels donated by members of the public.
Auckland City Mission told reporters on Wednesday that staff have begun contacting up to 400 people to trace packages that may contain the candy – solid chunks of methamphetamine wrapped in candy wrappers. New Zealand police have launched a criminal investigation.
According to the New Zealand Drug Foundation, a drug testing and policy organization that first tested the candy, each piece can contain up to 300 times the amount of methamphetamine a person would normally ingest, which can be lethal.
Foundation spokesman Ben Birks-Ang said disguising drugs as harmless items was a common method of cross-border smuggling and many more sweets could have been distributed across New Zealand.
Burks Ang said the sweets had a high street price of NZ$1,000 (US$608) each, suggesting the donations by unidentified members of the public were accidental rather than a deliberate attack.
At least eight families, including one child, have reported eating the tainted sweets since Tuesday, according to city missionary Helen Robinson. No one has been hospitalized, and Robinson said most immediately spat them out because of their “horrible” taste.
Robinson said the charity food bank only accepts donations of commercially available food in sealed packages. The pineapple snacks, labelled with Malaysian brand Linda, arrived in retail-sized bags and “that’s what they looked like when donated,” he added.
The Oakland City Mission received a call from a food bank client on Tuesday reporting “funny tasting” candy. Staff members tasted some of the remaining candy and immediately contacted authorities.
Robinson said the drugs were donated over the past six weeks, but it’s unclear how many were distributed during that time and how many were methamphetamine.
Some of the people who received the food parcels were users of the charity’s addiction treatment services, and the news that drugs had been distributed caused concern.
“To say we’re devastated is an understatement,” Robinson said.
Methamphetamine is a powerful and highly addictive stimulant that affects the central nervous system. It occurs as an odorless, bitter-tasting, white, crystalline powder that dissolves easily in water and alcohol.
Linda did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.
