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.
The story came to light after a dealer added a journalist on Instagram to an account selling cannabis sweets, which are known as gummies but have no connection to the legitimate brands named on some of the packaging. Some products use CBD, a chemical found in cannabis, are on sale in shops across the country, but these sweets are illegal and contain high levels of THC - the chemical that gives a user a high.
Sky News said that many appear to come into the UK from California, where drug laws are different, but some also appear to be homemade. The sweets can be bought for as little as £5 and ordering in bulk is encouraged with dealers offering discounts on big orders of gummies and harder drugs.
Cannabis sweets are a problem for police forces across the UK. The Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU), which has a unit to tacklethe threat of serious and organised crime across eastern England and covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and Essex, said boys and girls under 18 are consuming cannabis edibles, primarily those of secondary school age.
Detective Chief Inspector Rob Burns, from ERSOU, told Sky News that cannabis edibles are illegal and have side effects, such as loss of consciousness. He said: "The way they are branded to look like sweets suggests they are being marketed at children, but worryingly also means that they could easily fall into the wrong hands.
"We also know that gangs involved in county lines will use an array of tactics to target vulnerable young people, and reporting suggests social media is used to advertise the sale of cannabis edibles, potentially to appeal to younger people who are using multiple social media platforms."
He added that anyone with information on the sale of these items or who thinks a child is being exploited to sell them should contact the police.
Social media companies said that they have strict policies prohibiting the buying or selling of any drugs, including sweets containing THC. They say they actively monitor this issue on their platforms using a mix of both technology and humans to review content. Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, told Sky News that it removed 98% of this content proactively in the last quarter and that it was working with the police and youth organisations to improve their moderation.
Most of the accounts and search terms flagged during the investigation have now been banned. The companies behind the sweets and snacks whose branding is copied by drug makers have previously spoken out against the look-a-like packaging, and some have taken legal action.
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