Nottinghamshire dealers imitate snack brands to sell cannabis

Drug dealers have been imitating popular brands to sell cannabis

Drug dealers are creating packaging imitating well-known snack brands to get young people to take cannabis, police have warned.

Nottinghamshire Police said criminals were increasingly lacing or injecting the drug into cookies, cakes, sweets and chocolate to try to evade arrest.

The force warned tests on some of the snacks had shown they included traces of rat poison and detergent.

It said it had incinerated a record £90m of seized drugs this year.

Officers said cannabis was still the "number one recreational drug" in Nottinghamshire and they were clamping down on dealers who target young people.

Fly spray

David Richardson, from Nottinghamshire Police, said: "There is a current trend where they are putting cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) into cookies, cakes, chocolates, and sweets but they have been mixed with other nasty things such as fly spray and one test came back with traces of rat poison.

"We are getting what we describe as cannabis edibles on a weekly basis.

"People have started doing their own and are more aware of how to do it through social media.

"We had one case where a woman from Nottinghamshire was making cannabis cakes for her own circle of friends.

"The cannabis market is evolving and those who sell this drug are trying to get one foot ahead of us."

Police are concerned about dealers' efforts to target young people with drug-laced sweets

"They think officers will assume they are just carrying chocolate bars or crisps, but on closer inspection we know that is not the case.

"The problem, and concern for us as a force is innocent people get involved and children could be attracted to it. We don't want that to happen."

The force said the combined street value of all the cannabis seized was around £6m in 2016.

That has now risen to more than £20m a year.

On average 300 to 500 drug items pass through the force's archive and exhibits department a week, including heroin, crack cocaine, amphetamine, cocaine, cannabis, cannabis edibles and cannabis plants.

Mr Richardson added: "Cannabis is not getting worse - we are just getting better at finding the drugs. These teams are squeezing the drugs market and are massively proactive.

"We thought we might experience a dip during the pandemic, but we have not had that. We have just got busier."