A Friendly Reminder: Please Don’t Donate Your Edibles to a Food Bank
This is some after school special nonsense.
As with all crises, the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting struggling communities harder than others. Food-insecure folks find themselves unable to use food stamps for many grocery delivery services. In addition, the hoarding panic has kept those who do brave the supermarkets from buying WIC essentials needed for infants and children.
As a result, food banks are stepping in to fill the void, mobilizing volunteers to make sure that people get fed. 37 million people were food-insecure before the pandemic, but with job loss and businesses closing, that number grows ever higher.
Food banks are wonderful resources, and more than deserving of your donations, both in foodstuffs and in money. But when you’re donating food, please make sure that you are not donating edibles made with marijuana.
This seems like a ridiculous request. Who is donating edibles to food banks?! Whelp, it’s real and it happened in Utah of all places. Two children were hospitalized after eating Nerd Ropes candy laced with THC. According to the Roy City Police Department, the First Baptist Church of Roy (which partners with the Utah Food Bank) handed out 63 bags of food to 63 different families in need.
Each bag contained a few packages of candy, and it is not yet known how much of the candy has been tainted. Ginette Bott, president and CEO of the Utah Food Bank, released a statement saying, “We are absolutely horrified that this product went out to any of our partner agencies, and can easily see how volunteers would not have known what to look for.”
Bott added, “We are hopeful that there are no more candies out there, … We are in the process this morning of trying to backtrack through the one million pounds of food we received this month and trace what we can.”
Here’s a situation that could have easily been avoided by reading the labels: the candy was labeled as “Medicated Nerds Rope” and contained 400 mg of THC. That means that those labels went unnoticed by those who donated the candy, packaged the candy, and consumed the candy.
But in these times of crisis, who is paying such close attention to labels?! After all, no one would assume that the candy they are receiving from a FOOD BANK would have edibles in them. And mistaking edibles for regular food is a common mistake for those of us who live in states with legalized marijuana, let alone states like Utah which do not.
I am so curious as to how this happened. Was an overzealous Utah mom just grabbing her teen’s candy stash willy nilly? Did a well-intentioned stoner get confused while gathering supplies from his own home? Is this the work of some chaotic energy prankster looking to amuse themselves during the pandemic?!
I have SO MANY questions readers, and not enough answers. Utah might want to take a closer look at their kitchenware donations before some nice family ends up with a makeshift honey bear bong instead of, I don’t know, a nice set of ceramics?
(Paramount Pictures)
So what have we learned here? As always, nothing. Although if you are feeling generous with your drugs, donate them to consenting adults who will actually enjoy them, you filthy animals.
(via CNN, image: Paramount Pictures)
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