Is it cocaine or candy? Uh, it's both. Drug dealers eager to invent the newest disguise to smuggle their goods have found yet another inventive way.
According to an NBC News report a troubling development is drug dealers luring teenagers and young kids with candy flavored cocaine. This drug also has a higher street price than regular cocaine.
"Attempting to lure new, younger customers to a dangerous drug by adding candy flavors is an unconscionable marketing technique," MSNBC says.
"My daughter would take it. 'I think it's entirely reprehensible' police Sgt. Dave Hatfield of Cathedral City, Calif., said of the flavored cocaine. 'It's already a scourge on our society to begin with.'"
This cocaine is full-strength powder into which strawberry, coconut, lemon and cinnamon flavoring had been chemically synthesized.
Key Themes Behind This Trend
- Candy Flavored Drugs
- Drug dealers are disguising their products by adding candy flavors, presenting an opportunity for companies to innovate technologies that can detect these drugs with ease.
- Youth Luring Tactics
- The use of candy flavors to target young customers by drug dealers is a concerning trend, and presents an opportunity for communities and organizations to develop educational strategies that warn young people of the danagers of these substances.
- Higher Cost
- Candy flavored cocaine poses a higher street pricing than regular cocaine, signaling an opportunity for law enforcement to increase their efforts to intercept these more expensive and potentially more profitable products.
Where This Applies
- Law Enforcement
- As candy flavored drugs gain popularity among users, law enforcement agencies could benefit from the development and implementation of more advanced technologies to detect these substances, thus reducing the potential harms they pose.
- Education
- Candy flavored drugs present a significant threat to young people; schools, community organizations, and healthcare institutions can strategize around getting information and warnings out to adolescents and young people about harmful drug use.
- Pharmaceuticals
- As the drug landscape changes, opportunities exist for innovations in pharmaceutical technologies for the development of safer, non-addictive pain management alternatives, as well as drug-detection technologies that use sophisticated assays to identify drug-like compounds accurately and correctly.
