Hmmn &%+((£ the plot thickens, spiked hot chocolate and taser guns. Actually a handkerchief soaked in any suitable solvent would do the job just as well, takes seconds to apply and leaves no fumes. Would knock a child out in seconds and can be reapplied at will when necessary.
I honestly don't think it would have been necessary to sedate any of the children. They were asleep. If you pick up a sleeping child it doesn't start screaming immediately, if at all, and certainly not within the timeframe of entering the bedroom, scooping one up and leaving which could be done within a minute. There have been dozens of reports of "gas attacks" on sleeping holiday makers, including families, which have been roundly ridiculed on here and elsewhere. The fact is that in most of these cases the families believed that they must have been gassed or sedated because they didn't wake up, and cannot believe that they slept all the way through a robbery that took place inches from their sleeping bodies. The gas story is therefore a way of trying to rationalise what seems compeletely irrational to them. I think that's what the McCanns may have done, and what some of us are also doing - trying to come up with an explanation for what is a simple everyday phenenomenon - ie: deep sleep.