Two people have been arrested and charged after seven Virginia elementary students ate gummy bears from a plastic baggie that later tested positive for the potentially deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl, the Amherst County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
At first, it seemed the students were having an allergic reaction to something they ate Tuesday, Amherst County Public Schools said. The sheriff’s office conducted a field test of the bag, which had “a positive reaction for fentanyl,” the school district said.
“Preliminary investigation shows the students ingested gummy bears from a plastic baggie. In that baggie contained a residue, and the residue tested positive for fentanyl,” sheriff’s spokesperson Lt. Dallas Hill told CNN.
It’s suspiciously similar to the gummy incident in Japan.
Although I guess it’s coincidence, one hypothesis is that there are organized people trying to addict youngsters into drugs.
The idea of drug dealers trying to addict kids to drugs has been popular since at least the 80s, and I’ve never seen a single credible report of it happening. It just doesn’t even make sense. Addiction doesn’t happen instantly, and even if it did, the kids wouldn’t understand the cravings they were having, wouldn’t know what to do about it, and wouldn’t have reliable access to money to pay a dealer.
It also doesn’t make sense from a dealer’s protective. A dealer would much rather risk jail if they get caught than risk being lynched by a mob of angry parents.
The cases in Japan were accidental, the sellers didn’t realize what was in the gummies.
This feels like intentional disregard for safety, at best.
Who do you mean by the seller? The producer of the gummies, who made gummies of a chemical that imitates marijuana? The same producer who continued to sell the gummies even after news articles circulated, and said that they’ll continue selling the gummies WITH THE CHEMICAL because it was not illegal? That’s intentional.
The store in Japan was unaware of the chemical or what it could do, and there was no way for them to predict that their customers would have such an adverse reaction.
The immediate response to the wave of illnesses in Japan was a change in Japanese law to ban that chemical and the shop immediately pulled it from sale and issued an apology.
Neither the shop nor the Japanese government has any say regarding what the producer of the gummies does outside of Japan.
The manufacturer is based in Japan, they said they’ll continue to produce it because it’s legal. I don’t know which store you’re talking about.
I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.
re-reads old news articles
(Damn, this was already a month ago.)
So it was produced by an Osaka company, but the stores selling their product wasn’t the reason people got sick. Some “guy” at an outdoors festival was passing them out to minors. The manufacture specifically forbade minors from buying or consuming them. Once festival bro bought them, it was out of their hands.
And if the Japanese company that makes these gummies wants to keep making them, they do have to change recipe to omit HHCH. If they don’t, they’ll run afoul of the new law now banning it from use in Japan.
Was HHCH the real reason 20 people got sick at one festival on one day? Dunno.
I don’t know either, but the sole fact that the guy distributed HHCH to people unaware of that marijuana replacement chemical is inexcusable of him.
Tricking someone into taking drugs is assault. The victims often have a really bad time. People who use drugs usually understand that. That guy must have been either an asshole, a moron, or both.
Well, yeah. But what’s strange is there are no articles about the guy. Only the store that sold it and the company that made it. Can they not find him?
Japanese news articles say he was arrested. They probably know the identity of the man.
Seems it’s a strange person who talks about gods daily.
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I have no idea how a store can be unaware of marijuana-imitation, but yeah, whatever.
I agree, we’re taking them at their word.
But I don’t think they were trying to sidestep the marijuana ban in Japan. Just trying to offer some novelty product to separate tourists from their money.
As I said, the incident in Japan was a complete accident unlike what happened with these two characters.
So, you take their words, and I don’t. Fair.