Pair now charged after allegedly handing out cannabis candies to Winnipeg trick-or-treaters

Two people who were arrested after police said they handed out cannabis candies to Winnipeg trick-or-treaters as young as six have now been formally charged.

Sheldon Chochinov and Tammy Sigurdur are charged with numerous offences, including 13 counts each of distributing cannabis to a young person and distributing cannabis knowing it's illicit.

Under theCannabis Act, criminal offences related to providing cannabis to youth can carrymaximum penalties of 14 years in jail.

Both Chochinov and Sigurdur appeared atprovincial court on Tuesday.

Police previously only announced they had arrested a 63-year-old man and a 53-year-old woman after searchinga home near the south end of Coleraine Crescent.

The update comes about two months after police said officers received more than a dozen reports about the Halloween candies from a small area in a south Tuxedo neighbourhood.

The children who received the candies ranged from six to 16 years old, police previously said. There were no reports of harm to children who got the candies.

The candies were all found in zipped sandwich bags along with full-size chocolate bars and were packaged to look like Nerds candy, police said.

The packages said they contained 600 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),the main psychoactive property of marijuana. The maximum THC amount allowed for edibles in Canada is 10 milligrams per package.

Police said testing the candies for THC would take a while, but investigators believed the candies were THC gummies that appeared to be "exact replicas" of Nerds rope candies, Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Dani McKinnon said at a news conference at the time.

On Wednesday, McKinnon said in an email that police have not yet gotten any updates about that testing from Health Canada.