NYC Busts Drug-Dealing Ice Cream Truck

Oxycodone sellers licked
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 18, 2011 1:29 PM CDT
NYC Busts Drug-Dealing Ice Cream Truck
"Oh no!" said a neighbor. "My kids bought ice cream every day last summer. It's horrible, scary, that they were moving drugs. This is a close-knit community. We never suspected."    (Shutterstock)

In New York City's Staten Island, oxycodone addicts were more enthusiastic than little kids about the arrival of the Lickety Split ice cream truck: Some 31 people have been indicted for running a drug ring that investigators say used the ice cream truck to sell the addictive prescription painkiller—and that pulled in $1 million, reports the New York Daily News.

Police say the ice cream truck's operators would serve ice creams to children before conducting their more profitable business, selling some 42,755 pills at $20 a pop. The case is "symptomatic of a dangerous drug epidemic” that has hit New York, police said in a statement: “the skyrocketing rates of prescription opiate use and abuse." Around 1 million prescriptions for oxycodone were filled in the city last year, click here for that story. (More Oxycodone stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X