COXSACKIE -- It's a recipe Willy Wonka never looked into.
Sugar, water, corn syrup and some artificial flavorings. Perhaps some food dye or coloring to make it more appealing to the eye.
And weed. Lots and lots of weed.
Mix it all together, pour it in a saucepan and cook to about 300 degrees. Lay it out on a tray or some moldings. Cool it, cut it into little chunks and wrap them all up. Take them to your nearest concert and sell for $10 apiece.
Marijuana candy. Troopers say a father and his 24-year-old daughter had 40 pounds of it in the trunk of their sedan during a Monday morning traffic stop on the Thruway.
"They look like Jolly Ranchers" said State Police Investigator John Kelly, who handled the case. "Only they're a lot more potent than Jolly Ranchers."
Troopers said Gary Fox and his daughter, Kayla Fox, had a smorgasbord of sugary pot-laced sweets stashed in their Toyota Avalon: cherry, orange, root beer, sour apple, coffee, butter rum, guava. Even pomegranate.
Each batch was separated by flavor into bags and Tupperware, sealed tight two or three times over and appropriately labeled with black marker.
Fox and his daughter were driving south from Troy. Trooper D. Jimenez, who asked that his first name not be used because he participates in sensitive investigations, made the stop at 11:23 a.m. as the pair was driving past Coxsackie.
The car made an unsafe lane change, had a busted taillight and no front license plate, Jimenez said.
A pound of actual marijuana stuffed in a duffel bag in the trunk is what Jimenez said he smelled first. A police dog helped confirm the candy was contraband, too.
"The daughter said she had no idea any of it was there, but I have a hard time believing that," Jimenez said. "You could smell it once they rolled down the window."
Fox, 48, and his daughter were each charged with a felony count of criminal possession of a controlled substance, which carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence. They were both arraigned in Catskill Town Court and sent to Greene County jail after failing to post $15,000 bail.
Gary Fox, of Reading, Mass., told investigators he was on his way to drop Kayla off at her home in Queens.
Investigators believe the pair drove around the Northeast selling the candies at "jamband" concerts -- Kelly said they had a stack of ticket stubs in the car -- getting upwards of $10 a piece for each candy.
Both Jimenez and Kelly said its the first time they've seen marijuana candy. Same for Sgt. Paul Swayze, a 26-year veteran of the force.
"I've never seen anything like it," Swayze said.
Though it's an unusual sight to law enforcement in New York, a spate of arrests for possessing and manufacturing marijuana candy have been made across the country over the past few years, including a recent arrest of a Wisconsin teenager for bringing some to his high school. Some medicinal marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado sell the candy.
Unlike pot brownies or cookies, hard marijuana candy is made with highly concentrated marijuana oil or extract, Swayze said.
"With the brownies they just flake it up and bake it in like oregano," Swayze said.
The oil is made by grinding the weed into a fine powder, heating it in vegetable oil for up to an hour and passing it through cheesecloth to remove any solids.
Troopers said Fox's candy was made with a highly concentrated extract whipped up in a special device that cooks the oil down to its purest form, with just a liquid pool of THC -- the active chemical in marijuana -- left at the end.
The oil or extract is then mixed with sugar, water and corn syrup and cooked. Jimenez said the candy can be smoked, but is usually eaten.
Fox's batch was chopped up into domino-sized dark brown chunks.
Kelly said the candy appeared unassuming until they unsealed the bags.
"It was a huge whiff of butterscotch and pot," Kelly said. "It was a very fresh batch."
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