A first-grader brought dozens of little bags of crack cocaine to his Chicago Heights elementary school Friday and began passing them out to classmates, calling them "candy," officials said Sunday.

Adults at Lincoln School, which has fewer than 200 students in kindergarten through eighth grades, learned what was going on through other kids and alerted police.

"He lives in a household where apparently there's drug dealing, and when he sees these little bags of rock cocaine around the house, they're telling him it's candy," Chicago Heights Deputy Police Chief Michael Camilli said.

A member of the household is believed to have stashed "40 bags of rock in his book bag . . . when he gets to school he finds them in his book bag, and he knows this is 'candy' because this is what [people in his home] say it is," Camilli said. "Then he starts handing it out. It's insane.