It’s the type of stunt that would have gone down a treat at a funky record store party – but serving cannabis-laced muffins at a conservative office morning tea is probably not the right crowd.
One wonders what a worker was thinking when she served a tray of marijuana-laced muffins at a farewell party for a colleague in the beach-side town of Noosa in Queensland.
The 42-year old employment agency worker allegedly took the home-baked treats along to the office morning tea held for her colleague last Wednesday, who had accepted a redundancy. But within hours of the morning tea, a number of co-workers started to fall ill – apparently as a result of ingesting the muffins.
One woman, who collapsed and fell unconscious, had to be taken by ambulance to hospital. Another colleague rushed to see her GP, suffering from nausea.
Employment Services Queensland general manager Chris Hamilton told media that a number of staff members became unwell after eating the muffins. “They progressively became more unwell over a period of hours,” Hamilton said. “Obviously the [muffins] were nice enough that people had a couple each. The lady who was hospitalised had two I believe, so she probably ingested enough substance to make her quite unwell.”
Despite the incident, office morning teas will continue at the agency despite the ‘space cakes’ mishap. “You could be very risk averse about this, but if you look at the likelihood of something occurring like this in the future it's very, very low,” the general manager said. “While the consequence is significant, the overall risk assessment is that providing that we put word out to all staff about being careful about what you put in your tucker when you bring it in, that's about all we can do. Otherwise you would be jumping at shadows,” he added.
Meanwhile the baker of the muffins has been charged with one count of supplying and possessing a dangerous drug.