Cannabis sweets are being packaged to look like bags of Haribo and Skittles before being sold on social media, an investigation has found.
Police say that children as young as eight have been taken to hospital after eating the sweets that are packaged to make them attractive to youngsters. A third of people arrested in relation to cannabis edibles in the east of England are under the age of 18, and there are concerns that the drugs are being used to lure children into trafficking drugs by county lines gangs, which are based in big cities but use youngsters to deliver and sell drugs to users in towns and rural areas.
The sweets are routinely promoted and sold alongside class A drugs including heroin, cocaine and LSD, as well as large quantities of marijuana. Sky News, who carried out the investigation, found dealers are operating openly on the five most popular social media sites - Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat. They are also using the messaging services Whatsapp and Telegram, with the latter the most popular platform for dealers to provide prices and initiate sales.
