Recently, a man who blacked out while still driving a 38-person bus headed from a Connecticut casino back in this past March has officially been slammed with 38 separate counts of reckless endangerment and claims that he had no idea that the gummy candies he was consuming before he blacked out contained marijuana.
Jinhaun Chen was taken into custody while at his home in Boston this past Monday and went before the court the next day, as reported by the Associated Press.
Chen, who was only able to speak through a Chinese interpreter, stated to Superior Court Judge Ndidi Moses, “I didn’t know it was marijuana. I didn’t know.”
It was reported by CT Post that on the 13th of March, just after three in the afternoon, a Connecticut state trooper was sent out due to reports of a bus going down I-95 south. The state police officials stated that Chen was entirely passed out in the driver’s seat when the trooper made it to the bus. One of the passengers told the police officer that Chen had been consuming something from a small bag next to him before he passed out, and police have since stated that they discovered a bag of “Smokies Edibles Cannabis Infused Fruit Chews” sitting next to Chen.
Victor Chen, the manager of the company where Jinhuan Chen was employed, stated that Jinhaun “doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, but he has a sweet tooth and likes candy.”
“This would never have happened a couple of years ago, but now there’s marijuana everywhere here,” stated Victor.
The driver was then taken to Bridgeport Hospital and was found to have extremely high levels of THC in his system. Moses set in place a bond of $25,000 for Chen and is slated to continue the case on the 25th of August.
Many have claimed that it is very hard to tell the difference between certain marijuana products and other candy or snack packages. A study conducted in April was published in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal issued warnings that some packaging for marijuana edibles looks almost identical to popular name-brand candies such as Nerds Rope and snacks like Doritos Nacho Cheese chips.
Back in May, a few children out in California accidentally consumed cannabis at school because they thought it was candy.
The students from Jacoby Creek School were transported to the hospital once they began to show signs of intoxication at school in the wake of eating the cannabis edibles, as reported by the Times-Standard. The school is located in Humboldt County, which is an area known for its cannabis.
Police officials from the area think that one of the kids brought the gummies from home without knowing that they were infused with cannabis.