The key facts
- About 15 children aged 1–6 in San Diego received psilocybin gummies on Halloween; no poisonings were reported
- A search of the house yielded more than a kilogram of cannabis, over 25 grams of methamphetamine, and weapons
- Two men aged 80 and 45 were detained — on suspicion of illegal weapons possession, not for handing out candy
Candy with a hallucinogen on Halloween
About 15 children aged one to six received chewing candies containing a hallucinogenic substance on Halloween in San Diego, USA, Newsweek reports, citing a Life.ru publication. The incident occurred on October 31 in the Ocean Beach neighborhood: children collecting holiday treats noticed packages of gummy candy on the porch of one of the houses that looked like ordinary sweets, and took them with them.
How the dangerous sweets were discovered
One of the fathers noticed an unusual packet in the hands of his two-year-old son: the packaging featured a giraffe, and the lettering looked blurry. Looking closer, the man found a mention of psilocybin mushrooms and dosage information, and immediately took the candy away from the child. The parents reported it to the police, and testing of the preserved samples confirmed the presence of the banned substance. It is unknown whether any of the children managed to eat the gummies; no cases of poisoning or hospitalization have been reported.
Search and detentions
A few days later, law enforcement searched the house near which the dangerous treats had been found. Inside, they discovered more than a kilogram of cannabis, over 25 grams of methamphetamine, electronic scales, packaging materials, and records presumably related to drug trafficking, as well as firearms and ammunition. Two men, aged 80 and 45, were detained; however, the initial suspicions concern illegal possession of weapons, not the distribution of drugs to minors. Police have not yet established who exactly left the packages on the porch or for what purpose; the investigation is ongoing.
Other Halloween incidents
This is not the only report of dangerous objects in holiday sweets: according to police, on Halloween in Germany, children found needles and small magnets in the treats they had collected — in the town of Wernigerode, metal objects were found inside candies, and in Appenheim a nine-year-old boy noticed two magnets attached to a chewy sweet. No children were harmed. Unlike the German cases, which involved foreign objects, the presence of a narcotic substance has been confirmed in San Diego, but the detainees' connection to the candies has not yet been established.
