MMMMMMMMM....Trippy Candy

[Big Pimpin]

Any mall memebers from Utah that could hook us with some free samples?



Some of the caramels were decorated with swirls; others were wrapped in wax paper and placed in small decorative bags.

"They looked like Grandma's homemade caramel candies," said Lt. Mike Forshee of the Utah County Sheriff's Office.

But law enforcement officials in Utah and California say they contained illegal hallucinogenic mushrooms.

Three people now face drug charges for possessing and selling the candies. Utah County officials are alerting other departments to the ruse, saying this is the first time they have seen seen mushrooms passed off as candy.

Caramel-coated mushrooms might join a list of drugs disguised as items found at gas station counters. In recent years, police have warned the public about methamphetamine manufactured to look like Sweet Tarts and marijuana mixed with sugar and food coloring to appear as a Jolly Rancher.

Recently, federal agents have found drugs manufactured and packaged to look like name-brand candy bars, said Suzanne Halonen, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Denver. Halonen said Thursday she hadn't heard of caramel-covered mushrooms, but drug dealers generally use candy to disguise drugs from police and make the drugs more palatable to younger customers.

"With the mushrooms covered in caramel, it's obviously marketing or targeting younger kids," Halonen said.

In mid-February, officers with the Utah County Major Crimes squad arrested a 21-year-old Orem man after he sold six of the mushroom caramels to an undercover officer, according to federal court documents. The documents say another 94 pieces of the drug candy were found at the man's residence.

Forshee said each piece was selling for about $25. Laboratory technicians have told him one piece was enough for four people.

The suspect agreed to help police in a sting operation and arranged another deal with his supplier. But then the 21-year-old disappeared, according to the documents. Police then contacted the supplier, who agreed to cooperate.

The federal documents say that informant told police he was receiving his caramel mushrooms from a man in Provo and that man was getting them from a dealer in the Northern California town of Arcata. On March 1, the informant ordered some of the candies from the Provo dealer. Two days later, the informant gave police a Federal Express package containing 200 of the caramel mushrooms. The California dealer was paid $1,000.

A similar deal was arranged for March 9, the documents say. Before the drugs changed hands, federal warrants were served on the dealers in Provo and California. Both are charged in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City with conspiracy to distribute psilocybin.

The Orem man first arrested in the case is charged in 4th District Court in Provo with two counts of drug possession and one count of drug distribution, all felonies. He remains at large.

Kym Thompson, a special agent with Humboldt (Calif.) County Drug Task Force, said when the caramel mushroom dealer was arrested there, he had just returned from the grocery store with corn syrup, brown sugar, butter and condensed milk - ingredients for homemade caramel.

Police also found evidence the dealers bought caramel in bulk, perhaps to melt and mix with the mushrooms, as well as moldings.

Thompson said the mushrooms appear to have been ground in a coffee grinder then mixed with the caramel. Swirls were placed on some of the mushroom candies, she added. The candies were then wrapped in wax paper, she said, and placed in a bag decorated with snowmen.

"All of the time, criminals are thinking of ways to get all of the illegal substances past law enforcement and to not be detected and this was a pretty good disguise," Forshee said.