An August 2022 Drug Enforcement Administration warning about a surge in brightly colored fentanyl pills that looked like candy or sidewalk chalk led to fears that the drug would be given to children on Halloween.
Joel Best certainly has. As a criminologist at the University of Delaware, Best has catalogued instances of contaminated Halloween candy going back nearly as farhas existed. Or rather, he has catalogued all the false reports, hoaxes, urban legends and baseless panics about so-called Halloween sadism, as a case of a child being seriously injured or killed by a Halloween treat from a stranger has never been substantiated.
Some rumors of Halloween sadism are merely reflections of the times and “the ways we express our anxiety,” Best said. In 1982, after seven people in the Chicago area died from poisoned Tylenol, more than 40 communities banned trick-or-treating that year, and reports of suspected poisonings spiked,In August 2022, the Drug Enforcement Administration released a warning about a surge in brightly colored fentanyl pills that looked like candy or sidewalk chalk. headtopics.com
From there, local law enforcement officials began releasing warnings citing these reports, and then Fox News interviewed those officials about their concerns, the source and substance of the warnings growing ever more blurred. Even Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) filmed a public service announcement about the supposed threat, citing the DEA and spreadingTragically, at least one child died of a fentanyl overdose on Halloween last year — a 20-month-old baby in Baton Rouge.