Ear candy for the stupid
Remember Mom:'Trust no-one. Fear everything'
Rainbow fentanyl passed out on Halloween? Why experts say that's 'absolutely ludicrous'
[
medicalxpress.com]
A cautionary tale has developed a new twist this year, as an alarming opioid has become the latest drug feared to be lurking inside trick-or-treat hauls for Halloween.
It's been an annual tradition for people to raise concerns of drugs like marijuana edibles or dangerous objects such as needles to be inside candy for the holiday. But this time around has been different, at least to Joel Best, a sociology and criminal justice professor at the University of Delaware who has spent decades studying the scare of tainted Halloween treats.
"This year has been especially unusual because you have prominent people pointing to a particular danger, which, of course, is the danger of rainbow fentanyl," Best told U.S. TODAY. "This has been very strange."
Best, who spends every year speaking with the media about Halloween drug hoaxes, said he normally gets interview requests about two weeks before the holiday, but this year he got requests in early September.
Rainbow fentanyl has become the latest concern for some Americans since the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration put out a PSA on Aug. 30, warning the colorful opioid is "made to look like candy to children and young people."
Best added that panic ensued when chair of the Republican National Committee Ronna McDaniel said in a September Fox News interview that parents are worried about whether rainbow fentanyl pills are going to be in Halloween baskets. It wasn't long after that Senate Republicans put out a PSA about the drug and Halloween.
But
in all his years of studying, Best has found no evidence of poisoned or fake candy harming or killing children on Halloween, aside from when a Texas father poisoned his son's Halloween candy in the 1970s.
He doesn't expect anything to happen this time around.
"This is idiotic," Best said. "Nobody's gonna give it away to small children."
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Part of Herzberg's research is understanding how street drugs and pharmaceuticals have shaped the country's views and culture. He said the fear of children being poisoned goes as far back as Prohibition in the 1920s, and continued into the 1960s with the rise of heroin.
The reasoning behind the fear is extreme cynicism, and there are some political motivations behind the fear, Herzberg says. The belief is that children and teens are innocent and being preyed on by drug dealers, which favors people who want stronger law enforcement and harsher penalties for drug users. He adds that playing into people's fears leads to support.
"The assumption is that there are some groups of people that just simply wouldn't, or don't have any natural inclination to use drugs," he said. "That's a claim that's made, but it's not true and it's not true today, either."
