But while these men say they did not sell any of the silver packets to children, no one batted an eye when they saw a vendor selling the sweets to children. That's because it's a normal occurrence - vendors often station their carts full of treats right outside of schools for students to buy. And for the most part, while these candies aren't exactly healthy, they're at least drug-free.
So when the news broke that these children had been intoxicated by marijuana, the Minister of Education said that he was outraged and disgusted. Today in a press conference, he said that whether or not the vendors knew what they were selling, they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near schools again.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"I was absolutely shocked and disgusted. We have a cabinet chat, so the entire cabinet started sharing messages about this incident and everybody was outraged and disgusted and wanted to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible and the minister of health was reporting to us minute by minute what was happening. We were all enraged and of course, we wanted to know what caused this. Was this some deliberate evil person targeting children, targeting our school children, what explanation if there was one could there be. That was certainly my and our initial reaction."
"They have a responsibility as vendors especially when you're selling to children, school-age children. These kids were between 5 and 15, you're selling to them."
"You have a special responsibility as a vendor to ensure that the product you are selling to them is safe. I don't want us to lose that element of it at all, it's a very important question - that element of responsibility that lies with the person selling the product, just like when we go to any store as adults and we pay our money for a product, we expect that we will get what we are paying for. If you are buying a soft drink or something, and half of it is water and half... you wouldn't accept that, so in the same way when kids are buying gummies they expect that they are getting a safe product. So they should not at all be allowed to continue selling as vendors to student."
"They knew that this product was tainted with marijuana and they still were seling it to the public, selling it to children, they would lose any right at all to serve as a vendor anywhere in our country."
But what happens to the rest of the vendors who make their livelihood off of selling to students, and who would never think of harming them like this? Will they be punished as well? Some parents are calling for the end to outside vendors, but here's what the minister told us about it today.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"School vendors, that's a critically important issue as well. We tend to have a very lax approach to school vendors, every school decide who will sell, some vendors are selling on the campus, some the school say you can't come on the campus but you can sell outside at the school gate, so I think this highlights the need for us to have a more effective policy on school vendors, many of them, the ones who sell food have to have a food handlers certificate but there may be loophole where some are just selling juice and biscuits, sell orange, plums and that kind of thing or sweets and you say I'm not handling food because technically you might not be selling tacos or meat pie or food, rice and beans or so but you're still handling food, you're still handling products that will be consumed by children, they put those into their mouth. So I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge that where those loopholes exist in terms of those schools vendors, all of us will have to work together, the schools, Ministry of Education, City Council, and the Ministry of Health, the people who actually certify these food handlers certificates to see if there are any loopholes there and if they are, how can we close them and address them."
