Hanoi children hospitalized after eating drug-laced cake

Dr Nguyen Tan Hung, deputy head of the hospital’s emergency and poison control department, said the five-year-old boy was admitted also with respiratory failure, Vietnam Television reported Tuesday.

His family said he had been normal but started to throw up and have seizures after eating a chocolate cake given by a neighbor.

Two other children who ate the cakes were also brought to the hospital but in less serious condition.

Doctors suspected the children might have consumed narcotics and tested the cake, and the results confirmed their doubts.

All three have recovered and are now in stable condition, they said.

The neighbor who gave the children the cakes said they had been left over from a party in his office.

The hospital has reported the case to the police.

According to Voice of Vietnam, Hanoi police warned that there have recently been many types of confectionery products, including candies, cakes and soft drinks that are added with narcotic substances.

They said those products have even been advertised publicly on the social media, including Facebook and TikTok.

Late last year a 56-year-old woman in Hanoi was hospitalized after vomiting and feeling dizzy after consuming just two popped kernels of popcorn, and tests at Bach Mai Hospital revealed she had marijuana in her system.