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And today the Minister of Human Development also weighed in on the incident. Dolores Balderamos Garcia said that they condemn everyone who was involved - the person importing the edibles, the one who irresponsibly discarded them, and the person who took them out of the dump and sold them to both adults and children. She added that marijuana edibles are a "trend" of North America, and should not be circulating on the streets of Belize.
Dolores Balderamos Garcia, Minister of Human Development
"Shock and dismay because as you know, our ministry, we are extremely concerned about every Belizean child. Yesterday, our National Commission for Families and Children put out a statement expressing strong condemnation of those responsible for getting that, I call it sweeties, strong strong condemnation to those distributing those drug-laced sweeties. And I think it goes towards the protection of children so we give strong condemnation of those responsible but at the same time it gives us an opportunity to call to attention a need for all of our society to protect our children and I call on, you know our NCFC is the statutory body but it's very closely connected with the ministry and so were are calling on parents, guardians, families, teachers to really take a good look at protecting our children. I know Minister Fonseca spoke about the vendors yesterday and of course Minister Kareem is beginning to get to the bottom of it. Now, my understanding and this is a bad thing, and I want to decry it in the strongest of terms, my understanding is that the drug-laced sweeties were probably brought into the country, so imported from abroad and this is where I have to give again the strongest of condemnation, why should we be following the crazes and the trends that are negative from North America and bringing that kind of thing into Belize. I think we don't need to import that kind of foolishness, and I believe the proper investigation needs to be done to see who brought that in, how it came in the possession of the exhibit keeper at the police, I mean if there was a charge then we all know those exhibits could have been kept despite the smell. So Minister Kareem explained it very well that they're looking into that total dereliction of duty but now at the same time, and I know Channel 7 is looking into it and making the investigative journalism, but at the same time we have to find out how it came into the country, who brought it in, where we're falling down, because we don't need to have anybody ingesting that, but much less our Belizean children."
