VALDOSTA, Georgia — Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2024, received a law enforcement briefing from officials at the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday afternoon on how drug traffickers have been increasingly making dangerous narcotics look like children’s candy.

“Most dealers are trying to reach out to our kids, so they’re trying to make it look more and more like candy,” one Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office official told Vance as they laid out drugs seized in recent weeks on a table in front of him and assembled media outlets, including Breitbart News, on Thursday.

“Is this actual candy, or is this drugs?” Vance asked as he pointed to one of the seized paraphernalia.

“No, this is actually THC,” the officers told Vance.

Then, the officials showed Vance a synthetic drug local to Georgia that looks like peanut brittle. “If a kid opened up this, they could easily confuse peanut brittle for the drug,” the other law enforcement official told Vance. “Of course, it’s all coming down the interstate. We just worked a case recently where we partnered up with Columbia County, Florida, and we got 30 kilos of cocaine that was coming from Texas, of course, from the border over there — he had already dropped 20 kilos. We got him with 30 in Columbia County. So, they’re using this interstate as a thoroughfare.”

Columbia County, Florida, is where Lake City, Florida, is, right around where I-10 hits I-75. Lowndes County, the seat of which is Valdosta, is in Southern Georgia, situated right on Interstate 75, above the Florida border. Just south of the Florida line, less than half an hour away, is Interstate 10, which goes all the way from Jacksonville, Florida, on the east coast to Los Angeles, California, on the west coast. I-75 goes from south Florida in Tampa all the way up through Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan to the Upper Peninsula and the Canadian border. In other words, these two major highways at the intersection of which Valdosta is very near provide a pathway to most of America, which drug traffickers connected to gangs and cartels use to move these products into American communities nationwide.

Vance asked the law enforcement officials if they had seen “examples of kids getting into this stuff.”

“I imagine if you’re seven years old, and you open this up, and you have no idea what it is?” Vance asked.

“It looks just like it came from the store,” one of the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office officials told Vance.

“It looks like Nerds, Gushers, Airheads, the Crawlers that most of our kids consume,” the other official told him.

Vance asked them who manufactures this packaging for the drugs to make it look like children’s candy and if it happens in Mexico and other countries. “Yes, sir, it’s done overseas and then brought across the border, and, then, oftentimes, it would be brought through California or one of those over there and then shipped through I-10, or another avenue is up to Atlanta, and then down to us through I-75,” officials said.

The official then explained to Vance that the traffickers often use children as part of a “story” in the car to mask that they are trafficking. In one case, he said they had kids holding fishing poles to make it look like they were going on vacation, and, in another, they made it look like they were a family going on a vacation to nearby Disney World.

“When you think about what it takes to manufacture hardcore drugs that look like children’s candy, there’s something wrong with you,” Vance said.

Both sheriff’s office officials told Vance that since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in 2021, it has gotten much worse — and the cartels have gotten smarter.

Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, spoke outside after the briefing to an assembled crowd and media, ripping Harris for allowing this to happen.

“Think about how sick you would have to be to manufacture drugs that look like children’s candy,” Vance said. “Think about how sick Kamala Harris has to be to let those people do business in our country instead of throwing them the hell out of our country, which is exactly what we should be doing. This is a disgrace, ladies and gentlemen. This is a disgrace born of our own failed leadership, and we can do so much better.”