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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Deadly Cocaine Cocktail

SM Jaleel re­calls lo­cal batch

by

20131212

A co­caine-laced soft drink man­u­fac­tured in T&T is be­ing blamed for the death in the Unit­ed King­dom of a Caribbean im­mi­grant.The death of Roy­al Navy vet­er­an Joromie Lewis, orig­i­nal­ly from the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, has sparked a to­tal re­call of all Cole Cold Pear D drinks off the shelves in Eng­land by the British Food Stan­dards Agency (FSA).SM Jaleel & Co Ltd, lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers of the drink, al­so has ini­ti­at­ed a sim­i­lar vol­un­tary re­call in T&T of the batch from which the taint­ed drink was pro­duced.

How­ev­er, the com­pa­ny al­so said yes­ter­day the taint­ed soft drink may have been smug­gled in­to the UK, since it did not ex­port its prod­ucts to that coun­try.The com­pa­ny's le­gal ad­vis­er, Ja­nine Col­lier, told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day the com­pa­ny's sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives and mer­chan­dis­ers were dis­patched to lo­cal su­per­mar­kets to re­move the af­fect­ed prod­uct from their shelves.Lewis, 33, of Gosport, Hamp­shire, died hours af­ter drink­ing a co­caine-taint­ed 20-oz Pear D drink on De­cem­ber 5.

Yes­ter­day, the FSA, in its alert, warned the pub­lic about the soft drink which has been found to con­tain high lev­els of co­caine."The prod­uct has been linked to the death of one per­son in Southamp­ton and is the sub­ject of an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Hamp­shire Con­stab­u­lary," the alert added.

Belfast Tele­graph ar­ti­cle, pub­lished on the UK news­pa­per's Web site, said: "Lewis con­sumed the drink in Southamp­ton on De­cem­ber 5 and died with­in hours at Southamp­ton Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal."Yes­ter­day, Col­lier said SM Jaleel & Co Ltd, of Ota­heite, al­so de­cid­ed to is­sue a vol­un­tary lo­cal re­call of the soft drink.

In a state­ment on its Web site, www.sm­jaleel.net, the com­pa­ny said all Pear D drinks from the batch con­tain­ing the best-be­fore code, "BB JAN 08 14, were be­ing "vol­un­tar­i­ly re­called" as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure. The com­pa­ny did not say how many drinks were in­volved in the re­call.The bot­tle from which Lewis drank was from the batch that is be­ing re­called.SM Jaleel said, how­ev­er, that it did not ex­port Pear D to the UK and be­lieved the prod­uct was smug­gled in­to the UK.

"We can on­ly as­sume that the prod­uct en­tered the Unit­ed King­dom through ir­reg­u­lar and unau­tho­rised means and is there­fore con­sid­ered con­tra­band."This was ev­i­denced by the fact that the best be­fore date on the bot­tle seems to have been com­pro­mised," the re­lease said.SM Jaleel added: "The Hamp­shire Con­stab­u­lary has con­firmed dur­ing their in­ves­ti­ga­tions that the bot­tle was tam­pered with and con­tained fa­tal amounts of liq­uid co­caine."

SM Jaleel added that the la­bel on the bot­tle of the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drink was not in com­pli­ance with the UK la­bel reg­u­la­tions and "could not have en­tered or passed through cus­toms in the UK through its ports of en­try."The com­pa­ny as­sured it had been as­sist­ing and would con­tin­ue to as­sist the Hamp­shire Con­stab­u­lary with its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Lewis's death.

Con­do­lences to fam­i­ly

SM Jaleel, in its state­ment, added: "Pear D has 25 years of trust, qual­i­ty and fam­i­ly tra­di­tion in T&T and as a com­pa­ny we are shocked and sad­dened to see our prod­uct abused and used in such a sin­is­ter man­ner."The com­pa­ny ex­tend­ed its con­do­lences to the Lewis fam­i­ly.Yes­ter­day, when the T&T Guardian tried to speak to SM Jaleel CEO Dr Aleem Mo­hammed about the alert, his sec­re­tary di­rect­ed all calls to Col­lier. She di­rect­ed the T&T Guardian to the com­pa­ny's for­mal state­ment on its Web site.

The FSA alert stat­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing to find out "whether more bot­tles of the prod­uct have been dis­trib­uted in the UK."The alert told mem­bers of the pub­lic they should "not con­sume this prod­uct and, if found, (they) should take it to their lo­cal po­lice sta­tion."Pho­tos of the Pear D bot­tle al­so were post­ed on the Web site.

Yes­ter­day, Press As­so­ci­a­tion du­ty ed­i­tor Rob Mid­dle­ton, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, con­firmed the re­port and said the Hamp­shire po­lice were still in­ves­ti­gat­ing the source of the taint­ed drink and re­tail­ers had been asked to re­move the drinks from their shelves.


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