As grey-market psilocybin sweets grow more popular, doctors warn of risks to unsuspecting kids
In the fall of 2022, a six-year-old boy was rushed to the emergency room at Mease Countryside hospital in Safety Harbor, Florida, a small city on western shore of Tampa Bay. “He was very lethargic, and very drowsy,” recalls Dr Francois Richer Lafleche, the admitting physician. The child had gobbled down a whole bar of chocolate that he’d stolen from his parents, unaware it was laced with psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
“His eyes weren’t going from left to right, as you see on common overdoses of hallucinogenics,” Dr Lafleche says. “He was more just overly sleepy. He was fine. There were no complications. But I was just flabbergasted. A chocolate bar? I think it was called something like a Choca-dot bar?”
The brand is actually Polkadot Bar. And they’ve become increasingly common in the psychedelic gray market. As more states open up laws around cannabis, Polkadot Bars and a range of other magic mushroom containing-candies – including One-Up Bars, Holy Grail Bars, Magic Bars, and Mushie Gummies – have become common, under-the-counter offerings in cannabis boutiques, smoke shops, and corner bodegas. The bars come in a range of flavours, from Ferrero Rocher, Twix and Fruity Pebbles to matcha, blueberry acai and “strawnana”.
