FW: Fwd: GUMMI YUMMIES

[Guest guest]

This response is from the epidemiologists at the DSHS Division on Mental Health

and Substance Abuse. I posted the EMS question on this to the Substance Abuse

Prevention list serve and this was shared on their list, so I'm cross posting it

back to EMS.

Barry

Barry Sharp, MSHP, MCHES

Tobacco Prevention & Control Program Coordinator

Substance Abuse Services Unit

Mental Health and Substance Abuse Division

There was a big discussion on this topic of " drunk gummy bears " around last

Halloween on the poison center listservs. So far, there haven't been reports to

Texas poison centers about this.

I checked out the literature, only news reports. You might want to check out the

following:

Bassett C. Drunk gummies: Teens soaking gummy bears in vodka to get a buzz.

KDAF. October 9, 2011. Available at

http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-teens-soaking-gummy-bears-in-vodka-to-get-drunk\

-20111008,0,1371559.story. Accessed on October 29, 2011.

Click2Houston.com. Parent alert: Alcohol in gummy bears. Click2Houston.com.

October 14, 2011. Available at

http://www.click2houston.com/news/29485420/detail.html. Accessed on October 29,

2011.

Fouraker C. Vodka gummy bears haunting parents this Halloween. WLXT. October 27,

2011. Available at

http://www.wltx.com/news/national/article/156718/2/Vodka-Gummy-Bears-Haunting-Pa\

rents-this-Halloween. Accessed on October 29, 2011.

McKnight M. Gummy bears with a dangerous kick. WOWT. October 28, 2011. Available

at

http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/Gummy_Bears_With_A_Dangerous_Kick_132804288.h\

tml?ref=288. Accessed on October 29, 2011.

Following are some of the things of note mentioned by the sources:

The candy masks the taste of the alcohol and avoid detection by parents and

authorities.

There are recipes and videos online.

Gummy bears are soaked in the refrigerator for several days so that the candy

soaks up the alcohol. The amount of alcohol a person is consuming by eating the

candy is unknown and can easily lead to an overdose. A test supervised by law

enforcement found that after eating three handfuls of adulterated candy, the

test subject's blood alcohol level was 0.038.

It can be found at schools.

Young children could accidentally eat the adulterated candy.

The land poison center did the following test.

FYI: One of our staff tried making these by following directions found online

and brought them into the poison center after the experiment. The staff member

used brand name Gummi Bears and brand name, but not top shelf vodka. A couple

observations:

1. The gummies were quite sticky after soaking in vodka. They look different,

they feel different and taste different. For folks worried about kids

inadvertently getting exposed to vodka soaked Gummis, it's hard to imagine

someone NOT noting the change in the gummi bears or being deceived that they

were " normal¨ gummis.

2. They didn't absorb much vodka after soaking at least overnight (I forget

total soak time). With very small volumes of ethanol being absorbed per

individual gummi, would likely take such a large volume of candy to get a decent

ethanol concentration that people would likely first get GI symptoms JUST from

the volume of candy.

3. Because the Gummi bears were so tacky, she let them dry for a couple days.

Even after letting them dry, they were still tacky to touch and they really

stuck together. This is a common comment from the Gummi-Vodka sites that I've

seen that have a section for user comments.