By: Inky Rose
Hello Inky Buds, as you may know Halloween is just around the corner, exactly 9 days away in PST (Pacific Standard Time.) While this brings much fun, happiness and memories, it also brings at least 1 heart-attack-inducing scare for parents. Move aside nails and razors in your chocolate bar, this year it's fentanyl. Yes, you read that right, this year's annual scare is drugs. This scare stemmed from the fact that in the LAX airport in Los Angeles, a passenger was caught smuggling fentanyl tablets in sealed candy packaging. The numbers aren't really consistent since many articles were written on different platforms, but anywhere between 12,000 and 20,000 fentanyl pills were discovered. According to www.christianpost.com: "The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Narcotics Bureau Detectives and Drug Enforcement Agency agents assigned to the airport discovered the pills inside boxes of Sweetarts, Skittles and Whoppers."
This sparked another scare for this year's Halloween. This isn't the first time where things inside candy are an issue around Halloween. There are other instances in which contaminated candy is the norm around Halloween. Around Halloween time in 2019, there was another outrage in which razor blades were found in Halloween candy. This incident was reported on KOIN 6, which is a news station in Portland, Oregon.
The video link is listed below if you'd like to watch it.
This always drives gullible and cautious parents into overdrive. The sources always state: "Parents, be on the lookout," or something similar. Now I must say, you can never be too careful when receiving things from strangers, especially food, but the media is always providing these stories around Halloween, conveniently enough...
This small-scale hysteria began around the 70s, when the real fear set in, and it wasn't just myths or cautionary tales. There were actual situations in which children died because of poisoned Halloween candy. According to CNN. Health " A five-year-old child died on Halloween in Detroit after consuming heroin. Early media reports of his death cited his uncle’s claim that he had been exposed to the drug in tainted holiday treats."
I did some research on it and found out that that 5-year-old was named Kevin Toston, and he actually didn't eat laced candy, but an actual heroin tablet. According to the NYTimes.com "Inspector Robert A. Slottke, chief of the Detroit homicide bureau, said that the boy had apparently swallowed the capsule while visiting an uncle's home. He said that the police did not know how the child had obtained the capsule and that no warrants were being sought in the case."
"Originally, the police said that Kevin had received the fatal dose when he had eaten Halloween trick‐or‐treat candy that had been sprinkled with the drug. But Inspector Slottke said that the quantity of heroin found in the boy's stomach during a medical analysis was the amount normally found in a capsule."
The next occurrence of a child dying because of poisoned candy was on October 31st, 1974. But this incident had nothing to do with Halloween besides the date. A man named Ronald Clack O'Bryan poisoned his 8-year-old son with potassium cyanide inside of a pixie stick. He poisoned his son shortly after he received the insurance claims on his children. O’Bryan had reportedly given poisoned pixie sticks to his daughter and three other neighborhood children in Deer Park, but the candy had not been consumed. Pretty messed up, isn't it?
Unfortunately, this macabre killing fueled the nightmares of parents. The story of O'Bryan, horrifically dubbed the "Candyman killer" charged the news with stories of children narrowly escaping eating sewing needles, razor blades, and other harmful substances in their Halloween candy. According to CNN. Health: "Though it had no evidence, Newsweek magazine asserted in a 1975 article that “over the past several years, several children have died, and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury from razor blades, sewing needles and shards of glass put into their goodies by adults."
As the years passed, the stories of "Halloween Sadism" have spread and made their way into parent's nightmares.
This threat has been greatly exaggerated, just because a man poisoned his son on the same day as Halloween. The media took advantage and spread these cautionary tales every single year. I am pretty sure that all these captures of drug smugglers don't happen every year when Halloween is around the corner. I have something to say though, the drug industry is very diligent when it comes to pricing. I have watched shows about catching smugglers around the main borders to the U.S. and they tell you what it is, and how much it would cost. I've seen that about 1 gram of cocaine will go for around $160-$180 USD! So now I reach my point, I don't think that drug dealers or people who own drugs, would try to give their "inventory" to kids for free. They do not have the means for paying for it, so overall they wouldn't end up with it.
I'm not saying it can't happen. It could be possible that an awfully malicious human being could lace some candy with illegal drugs. What I am conveying is that it isn't as flamboyant and crazy as the media portrays it. Even so, they hardly have any evidence to back it up. Someone could be bored and decided to bury a needle in a Milkyway, just for publicity. Even before people started becoming hysterical about Halloween candy, my parents always checked mine for airholes by pushing them slightly. If the air came out, that meant there was a hole, and was defective or tampered with. Even then, my family decided they weren't going to take the chance of fentanyl in candy this year. Fentanyl is very harmful in case you didn't know my Inky Buds. A single touch is fatal. Fentanyl can be intentionally, or unintentionally made. According to Health.Harvard.edu:
"Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, meaning it is made in a laboratory but acts on the same receptors in the brain that painkillers, like oxycodone or morphine, and heroin, do. Fentanyl, however, is far more powerful. It’s 50-100 times stronger than heroin or morphine, meaning even a small dosage can be deadly."
Fentanyl shuts the lungs down and causes respiratory problems. A lethal accidental overdose happened to a police officer who was dealing with a suspect who was harboring the drug.
The video is here, his reaction is almost instantaneous.
Luckily, he survives thanks to his partner, but this shows us how we put our lives in danger because of illegal drugs. Woefully, people get addicted even if it's life-threatening. They do anything for the first-time high, and that could be fatal.
This year, I would suggest being more aware about your candy. Even if the chances are slim to none, I wouldn't risk it honestly. I've always been aware of the possible risks and have always been careful, but things like this ruin Halloween for some families that want to have fun. I don't know about you Inky Buds, but no trick-or-treating for me this year. This year's scare seems more dangerous, so I'll especially be sitting this Halloween out for trick-or-treating.
Thanks for reading Inky buds, I hope you learned something, I did as well for this post!
I wish you all a safe Halloween and a good day🏙️/night🌃!
(Stay tuned for the credits/sources.)
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