Two of the lollies which were handed out at Auckland City Mission which turned out to be meth. Photo: RNZ / Luka Forman
A mother and her three-year-old son have had a lucky escape, after trying potentially lethal doses of methamphetamine, disguised as pineapple lollies, that they received in a food parcel from Auckland's City Mission.
Police have so far collected 16 of the lollies that were contained in Auckland City Mission food parcels given out to families. They contain a potentially deadly dose of methamphetamine.
A family friend is alarmed that after initially alerting police about the toxic sweets she was told it was okay for them to stay in the rubbish bin.
The family, from Uzbekistan, does not speak English. RNZ has since visited them with a translator, seen the lollies and contacted police on their behalf.
Meanwhile, Auckland City Mission's scrambling to track down up to 400 families who may have also been given the sweets that are in fact about 3 grams of methamphetamine.
The alarm was sounded yesterday after someone called the mission to tell them the lollies they had been given tasted foul; the meth gives them a bitter or acrid flavour.
This prompted mission staff to try them themselves. After they experienced significant side effects, the Pineapple Rinda branded sweets were immediately tested for drugs.
The results showed a single a lolly has up to 300 times the average recreational dose of meth. The police have collected 16 lollies so far and three people have sought medical treatment but nobody is currently in hospital.
The pineapple sweets, that were donated to the mission, came in a sealed commercial-sized bag that was split up with a handfuls of lollies dropped in individual food parcels.
The meth lollies came to Auckland City Mission's distribution centre on Boston Road in Grafton. Photo: RNZ / Lucy Xia
Lena is a friend of a North Shore family who received one of the parcels at 2.30pm Monday.
"My friend, for whom I arranged to get the parcel, told me that once they tried their lolly, they stopped consuming them and they threw them away in the bin. I thought that was not the right way because I think they need to be disposed [of]," she said.
Lena said she called the police and explained the lollies were in the bin.
"The person spoke to their supervisor, came back to me and said they can't be in the bin. They need to be disposed properly because it's dangerous. Someone might find them an overdose."
The police told her the family needed go to the police station and drop the lollies off, she said the family could not as they did not speak any English and asked if the police were instead able to pick up the lollies.
"She again put me on hold and spoke to her supervisor and then came back and said that no, I talked to the supervisor and basically, as long as it's in the bin, it's fine, don't worry."
Lena said the police should be picking up the methamphetamine spiked lollies when notified.
"New Zealand is a very relaxed country, but that sounds a bit too relaxed for me because we are talking about potentially a big volume of very serious drugs in the bin and what's going to happen to them? Someone can pick them up and also if they go to landfill, can someone still get access to them? I think that's not right," she said.
She said the child of the family was the first to try the lollies.
"It was a three-year old son. He tried it, put it in his mouth and then spit it out and said that the flavour was really bad, was very sour and then his mom didn't believe him. So she put another lolly in her mouth and she said the taste was terrible," Lena said.
"She had to wash her mouth three times and she still had the taste in her mouth."
Lena said yesterday she tried to explain what had happened, but because the family did not speak English well, they did not understand at first the lollies were spiked with methamphetamine.
"They didn't understand it was drugs, so it was actually just today when I spoke to the mother and explained to her, that's the first time she knew that it was drugs. She was terrified. She was really shocked," she said.
Lena said other people may not be aware of the dangers due to English not being their first language.
"I assume that the Auckland City Mission probably tried to contact them, but people like my friend would not understand what's being said to them or they wouldn't even pick up the phone."
She said there was another family from the Ukraine with several children who she helped to get their food parcel.
"She was contacted by the Auckland City Mission and told not to consume the candies, and there was some kind of explanation. But again, because of the language, she didn't understand that. Luckily, they didn't have any in her parcel.
"I know in the past when I help them with food parcels, there are usually no lollies. I think it's quite unusual."
RNZ's Checkpoint visited the family home on Wednesday afternoon with a translator and seen the lollies, which are now in a sealed plastic bag awaiting pick-up from police.
The Auckland City Mission has also called to do a welfare check.
Police response
Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin, who is leading the police investigation into the situation, told Checkpoint putting the lollies in the bin was not the instruction sent out by police.
"I don't know anything about that. I'm sorry, but we would like to collect those if they want to phone our crime squad at the Auckland Central Police station, our staff will certainly be interested in keeping that," he said.
He said the police were taking the situation very seriously.
"There's a massive risk to the public with these drugs being concealed in the form of confectionery, hugely dangerous to everybody, but especially everyone's kids and young people.
"It's about 3 grams in weight of methamphetamine. Although we haven't tested purity, it's probably reasonably high purity, and that's potentially a fatal dose."
If they could, the police would pick up every lolly that was identified by people who called the police station, Baldwin said.
"We're still trying to determine how many are in circulation and we're working with City Mission around that. We do need to try and get these meth lollies rounded up so that they are safe.
"It would have been an error on the part of who made the decision that we weren't going to collect them. Because the direction I've given is that if people phone the Auckland central police to come and get them, we'll send someone to get them."
Baldwin assured the public that police call staff understood the importance of the situation and the lollies would be collected if people phoned in to say they had got them.
So far the police had collected about 16 lollies.
"Whether or not there have been more, I haven't had that opportunity to go back up, but it looks like the media have been really helpful in getting a message out there and people are doing the right thing in contacting us.
"I hope for that number to grow overnight as we look to minimise the risk by rounding all of these meth lollies up."
He said the lollies were tested prior to the police being notified, and it was confirmed the lollies contained methamphetamine.
"They had at that time, four lollies in their possession and they all were confirmed as meth, we have tested one and confirmed methamphetamine. We're treating it as 100 percent at risk and first and foremost, we need to round them all up."
He said the police believed the methamphetamine was of high purity.
"We've seen previous examples of methamphetamine being imported into New Zealand concealed in foodstuffs and particularly liquids. That was certainly high purity, regarding the purity we we haven't got into purity testing of these as yet. I would imagine there would be high purity. That's what we've seen in the past."
He said the police had spoken to the company in Malaysia that made the legitimate lollies and they were cooperating with the investigation.
"We've made initial contact with them and and they're certainly willing to assist us," he said.
Checkpoint has contacted Rinda. It said it do not condone the use of any illegal drugs in its products and would be working closely with police to address the issue and protect the integrity of the brand.