The police in New Zealand were trying on Wednesday to recover chunks of methamphetamine that a local charity accidentally gave out because they were disguised as candy.
The fake candy distributed by the charity, Auckland City Mission, looked like individually wrapped, pineapple flavored boiled sweets from the Malaysian confectionary brand Rinda. They had been donated by a member of the public, according to Helen Robinson, the charity’s chief executive.
They were actually small blocks of methamphetamine. Each weighed about three grams (0.1 ounce) and packed up to 300 doses of the drug, according to Ben Birks Ang, the deputy executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, which examined the methamphetamine. That is a potentially lethal quantity.
Three people — a worker at the charity, a child and a teenager — sought medical attention after tasting the candy but were all discharged, the Auckland City District Police said.
At least eight families reported tasting the fake candies, Ms. Robinson said. Luckily, they tasted so bad that those who ate them immediately spat them out, minimizing the effects, she said. But because of their high dosage, even a small touch or lick could be dangerous.
Symptoms of eating the fake sweets could include chest pains, seizures, hyperthermia, delirium and loss of consciousness, according to the New Zealand Drug Foundation.
The Auckland police said that it was attempting to recover all the “candy” and had launched an investigation into the origins of the drugs. By Wednesday afternoon, officers had recovered 16 pieces, Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin said at a news conference.
He added that it was unclear how many had been accidentally distributed. It could have been one packet containing 20 to 30 individually wrapped pieces, or two or three packets.
“The public can be assured we are treating this matter extremely seriously,” Inspector Baldwin said.
Auckland City Mission did not say where the drugs were distributed or give any details about the people who may have received them. The charity in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, provides food and housing for people living in poverty. It says that it gives out about 50,000 food baskets per year.
The candy appeared to have been donated sometime in the past six weeks, Ms. Robinson said. The charity only accepts commercially produced products, and the “candy” appeared to be just that because it was sealed and Rinda was a “relatively well known brand,” she said.
In a statement, Rinda Food Industries said that it was cooperating with the New Zealand authorities.
Staff at Auckland City Mission were first alerted to the problem on Tuesday, when someone who had received one of the charity’s food parcels called to complain of a “funny tasting” candy, Ms. Robinson said at a news conference. Believing them to be ordinary candy, staff members tasted some of the leftover candies, only to immediately spit them out.
The “acrid and revolting” taste, in addition to the “strange effect” the candies had on the staff members, raised alarm bells, Ms. Robinson said. So the staff took them to a drug testing clinic.
The police believed that the drugs came from overseas, Mr. Baldwin said, adding that smuggling illegal drugs into New Zealand by hiding it in food packaging was a common tactic.
He said it was unclear whether the drugs had ended up at the charity accidentally or intentionally. But given their high street value, he said, “this would be an expensive exercise to harm people.”
Read More: New Zealand Charity Accidentally Gives Away Meth Disguised as Candy
