Halloween Isn’t a Death Trap, You Can Calm Down
SO I’VE SEEN A LOT OF JUNK ABOUT POISONED HALLOWEEN CANDY AND THE LIKE OVER THE LAST WEEK AND I FIGURED KNOWLEDGE NEEDED TO BE LAID OUT HERE.
So this link will take you to snopes article on poisoned candy. Snopes, for those unaware, exists to ferret out urban legends and determine them true or false. SO
By far the most famous case of Halloween candy poisoning was the murder of eight-year-old Timothy Marc O’Bryan at the hands of his father, Ronald Clark O’Bryan, in Houston, Texas. The child died at 10 p.m. on 31 October 1974, as a result of eating cyanide-laced Pixie Stix acquired while trick-or-treating.
To make his act appear more like the work of a random madman, O’Bryan also gave poisoned Pixie Stix to his daughter and three other children. By a kind stroke of fate, none of the other children ate the candy.
The prosecution proved the father had purchased cyanide and had (along with a neighbor)
accompanied the group of children on their door-to-door mission. None of the places visited that night were giving out Pixie Stix. Young Mark’s life was insured for a large sum of money, and collecting on this policy has always been pointed to as the motive behind this murder.Though the case was circumstantial (no one saw the father poison the candy or slip the Pixie Stix into the boy’s bag), Ronald O’Bryan was convicted of the murder in May 1975. He received the death sentence and was executed by lethal injection on 31 March 1984 (not on the poetically-just 31 October as is often recounted in off-the-cuff retellings of the case).
The O’Bryan murder was an attempt to use a well-known urban legend to cover up the premeditated murder of one particular child. (Note that for this explanation of the boy’s murder to have been believed, the legend had to have been in wide circulation by 1974.) Though cold-blooded and horrible to contemplate, this crime still does not qualify as a genuine Halloween poisoning because there was nothing random about Timothy O’Bryan’s death.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp#lOUmEjkStcTobHBZ.99That’s right, the original shit that started this nonsense was one man poisoning his own kids. He blamed it on a random mad man. A lot of the cases you might have heard about? Not necessarily the candy. Normally if a kid shows any signs of illness post candy ingestion the parents freak, they tell the media, and a whole shit show happens. Then they find out later the kid was poisoned or sick because of something else entirely. But that doesn’t always get clarified in the press. For example:
Another attempt to obscure the circumstances surrounding a little boy’s death by invoking this legend took place in Detroit in 1970. On 2 November 1970, 5-year-old Kevin Toston lapsed into a coma and died four days later of a heroin overdose. Analysis of some of his Halloween candy showed it had been sprinkled with heroin.
This case was widely reported as a real-life example of Halloween sadism. Not nearly so widely circulated were the results of the police investigation, which concluded the boy had accidentally got into his uncle’s heroin stash and poisoned himself, and that the family had sprinkled heroin on the kid’s candy after the fact to protect the uncle.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp#lOUmEjkStcTobHBZ.99
NOW, pins, needles and razors? THOSE are a legit danger and it’s a good idea to check out the candy.
Unlike Halloween poisonings, many cases of tampered trick-or-treat loot involving the insertion of pins, needles, or razor blades have been documented.
To my mind, these cases constitute a different class of tampering than poisoning for a couple of reasons. First, the expected level of harm is severely reduced: poison is an attempt to kill; a pin in an apple is an attempt to frighten or injure. Professor Joel Best reported that he’s been able to track about eighty cases of sharp objects in food incidents since 1959, and almost all were hoaxes. Only about ten culminated in even minor injury, and in the worst case, a woman required a few stitches. Compared to “eat something and die,” a couple of stitches barely registers on the scale.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp#DSeIZ5XRJhAQJrKU.99
SO LETS TALK ABOUT THE MOST RECENT SCARE THAT’S ALL OVER TUMBLR THIS WEEK. ECSTACY AND WEED PILLS IN HALLOWEEN CANDY. What does Snopes have to say?
WHAT’S TRUE: Some forms of Ecstasy are brightly colored and look like candy.
WHAT’S FALSE: These forms of Ecstasy are “new,” intended to appeal to children, and likely to end up in kids’ Halloween trick-or-treat bags.
Read more at http://m.snopes.com/ecstasy-halloween-candy/#61cWrGMZO26ied3S.99
The moment I saw this ecstacy thing my first thought was “did no one pay attention in that section of health class about say no to drugs”? Ecstacy has been pressed into cute little pills for ages guys. It’s not new. It’s not done to disguise it as Halloween candy.
The “ecstasy in Halloween candy” warning looked to be a variant of age-old rumors about poison (and other dangerous substances) being randomly handed out to children in trick-or-treat loot, a persistent but largely baseless fear that’s dogged Halloween celebrations for decades. Despite long-held beliefs that Halloween candy tampering is both commonplace and regularly results in harm to children, reports of actual attempts to do so are virtually non-existent (or based on half-truths).
Excessive concern over colorful drugs (such as strawberry meth) either making their way into the hands of kids or being manufactured to appeal to them isn’t a new concern either: tales circulated in the 1970s claiming LSD merchants were targeting children by peddling their wares via attractive temporary tattoos. By sharp contrast, dire warnings about drugs designed with a candy-like appearance intended to “hook” kids have never come true — which stands to reason, as schoolchildren aren’t the most promising market for illicit recreational drugs. (LSD and MDMA also are largely not addictive substances.)
As is often the case with such rumors, the public seemed to conflate the existence of a drug that looked child-friendly (such as blue star tattoos, pink meth, or colorful MDMA tablets) with deliberate manufacture of those substances with an intent to attract children. Prior to its September 2015 circulation on social media as a cautionary tale, the photograph of Ecstasy used here appeared primarily on blogs discussing (presumably adult) recreational drug use.
An important distinction to bear in mind is that the MDMA depicted is not a new form designed to appeal to children: MDMA tablets have historically been produced with a variety of shapes and colors befitting its status as a “party drug.” Another is that recreational drugs (including MDMA) are generally expensive. The small collection of pills depicted here represents a street value of hundreds of dollars, so the notion that a neighbor would be distributing them to trick-or-treaters for no ostensible reason is rather implausible (especially given how many drug users tend to carefully guard their stashes and often won’t readily share them with friends, much less randomly-selected small children). So while the image of Ecstasy circulating on Facebook might at first appear to represent a true threat to kids on Halloween, there’s little reason to suspect Molly will be lurking in any plastic pumpkins this year.
Read more at http://m.snopes.com/ecstasy-halloween-candy/#61cWrGMZO26ied3S.99
So be smart, check your candy for foreign objects, but don’t buy into these scare tactics. These stories have been around since the 50′s they just keep showing up in different forms. Don’t fret unnecessarily and don’t freak out other people unnecessarily. You all will be fine. Have a fantastic Halloween and have fun!