WEDDING GUESTS WERE SICKENED BY MARIJUANA IN FOOD, POLICE SAY

Soon after a meal of meatballs, bread, tortellini and Caesar salad, the guests at the wedding of Andrew and Danya Svoboda began to feel strange, according to the authorities in Seminole County, Fla.

One man, an uncle of the groom visiting from Michigan, said he felt “tingly.” His heart raced and he was “having crazy thoughts,” the police said.

Another guest began feeling nauseated and dizzy even though she had drunk only one glass of red wine. Another woman said her heart felt like it was going to stop.

The guests at the Feb. 19 wedding soon learned that the food included marijuana, according to an arrest affidavit written by Detective Daniel Anderson.

Danya Svoboda, 42, of Longwood, Fla., and the caterer, Joycelyn Bryant, 31, have been charged with two felonies — food tampering and the delivery of marijuana — and culpable negligence, a misdemeanor. They were arrested Monday.

The arrests, reported Wednesday by WESH-2, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, come as more states make marijuana legal and as the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation recently to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, an effort to capitalize on the political resonance of legalized cannabis as an issue of economic growth and racial justice.

But the effects that the guests at the Florida wedding reported underscored warnings from some in the medical community about the potential dangers of ingesting or smoking marijuana, which can include disorientation, vomiting and impaired driving as well as more serious health issues such as cancer and pregnancy problems.

The police said that several of the 50 guests at the wedding reported that they felt high after eating the food at the reception, which was held at a clubhouse in Longwood, a city of about 15,000 people 15 miles north of Orlando.

The police arrived around 9:30 that night after they got a call to assist from Seminole County Fire Rescue, which had been dispatched to the clubhouse.

A deputy approached Andrew Svoboda and asked if he and his wife had “consented or requested” cannabis in their food.

Andrew Svoboda stared back “with a blank expression for a few moments before stuttering through a ‘no,’” Anderson wrote.

Andrew Svoboda was not arrested. The police collected lasagna and bread that had been tossed out after the wedding and sent them to a cannabis testing facility, which found THC in the food.

No one announced at the wedding that there would be marijuana in the food, the detective wrote.

One guests, identified as Miranda Cady, said she realized she was “stoned” after she ate bread and dipped it in oil. When she asked Danya Svoboda if she had put marijuana in the olive oil, the bride replied yes and “acted like Miranda Cady should be excited, as if she were given a gift.”