Oldham resident Donald Junior Green has pleaded guilty to Class A drug possession for not being able to tell the difference between nose candy and the regular kind.

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Every parent knows to dread the post-Halloween sugar high, but at least that’s the only kind of high most can expect on Oct. 31. In the UK, however, one local drug enthusiast did his best to change that, accidentally handing out bags of cocaine to a group of trick-0r-treaters as young as five years old, Reuters reported.

On Nov. 19 a court in the town of Oldham, in northern England, sentenced Donald Junior Green, a 23-year-old apprentice auto-body repairman, to 130 hours of community service for drug possession. When the kids approached his girlfriend’s door on Halloween, Green took a handful of plastic pouches containing the drugs and handed them over, mistaking them for bags of child-appropriate Haribo gummy candies the couple had been giving out earlier. According to Reuters, he told the Oldham Magistrates’ Court that he had just bought the cocaine that day for about $320.

Compounding Green’s problems: the three unsuspecting recipients of his stash — aged eight, six and five — were accompanied by their father, an off-duty police officer, Reuters noted.

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Green soon noticed his blunder and began searching the streets to track down the children, but not before their father had already found the drugs and alerted his on-duty coworkers.

“I know exactly why you are here,” Green told officers upon his arrest, according to the Press Association. “I knew you were coming.”

Green pled guilty to one charge of Class A drug possession and must pay about $230 in court fees, the Press Association reported, in addition to his community service sentence. His defense attorney described his mistake as “grossly foolhardy.”

Still, if the children had mistaken the drugs for candy, things could have turned out far worse. “Had dad not have gone in and recognized what it was, this could have been a very serious case,” prosecutor Sean Brady told the court.

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