FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — A metro Atlanta sheriff is alerting parents about a middle schooler found with a bag of marijuana-laced gummies that looked like candy.
Channel 2′s Tom Regan was in Fayetteville, where drug-laced candies are a growing problem.
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A school resource officer found an empty package that looked identical to Trolli Sour Gummy Worm candies in a student’s backpack. It’s unclear how young the student is or whether he handed the candies out, but the drugs were laced with potent THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
“Children today are thinking it’s regular candy because it’s packaged much like what you would eat in a store,” Sherif Barry Babb told Regan.
Georgia’s poison control center has seen a surge in emergency calls about pot-laced gummies. People are suffering from hallucinations, seizures and breathing problems.
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“[Side-effects] can be terrifying, and more than 50% of these cases being (in) children, this really a cause for concern,” Dr. Gaylord Lopez with the Georgia Poison Center said.
Drug treatment counselors say the potent gummies can be especially harmful to young and still-developing minds.
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“It just really messes up those highways or neuro-pathways that are laid for the rest of your life,” drug treatment counselor Kim Castro said. “It’s one of those things where you are going to have to talk to children and say, ‘Don’t eat anything where you don’t know where it’s coming from.’”
The sheriff has not disclosed the name of the middle school where the THC gummy bag was found in the backpack. It’s unclear if any disciplinary action was taken against the student.
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