By Eduardo Galindo Aguilar, Staff Writer
“Don’t go trick or treating! I read a news article about someone tainting candy with toxins!” It is a common myth that during Halloween strangers will give out candy containing things that put kids in danger. However, do these things actually happen and how did this myth begin?
The latest instance of something like this happening was last year when two people found needles in a Kit Kat bar, although thankfully nobody was injured. The Ohioans immediately turned in the candy to Fostoria police. Now, the real question at hand is “How often does this happen?”
It seems to happen mainly once a year or not at all. So the chances of your city having contaminated candy and you receiving it are close to zero. There was a hotline for this kind of situation but the National Confectioners Association shut it down. The former NCA spokesperson put it as “tampering is extremely rare, and we don’t even track it anymore because police just aren’t seeing it.”
How did this myth become widely known? There had been rumors of this type of thing happening of strangers handing out tampered candy. It reached a new high in 1982 because of tylenol poisonings. In 1982 somebody tampered with tylenol capsules in Chicago. This led to people dying from the capsules and with Halloween coming close by it made people think that candies could also be poisoned. Some communities completely shut down halloween afraid that the candies would contain harmful objects.
For the most part, you don’t have to worry about any blades or drugs in your Halloween candy. Although there have been reports of such things appearing in candies, these reports are quite rare. From the reports nobody seems to be badly injured or dying from these candies. So it seems safe to say that there is nothing out of the ordinary with your Halloween candy.
If you are worried about your candies having harmful objects then here are some things to look out for. If the candy wrapper appears to have been opened or looks off then throw it away. If it has holes on the wrapper throw it away and if you find any candy that looks like this call the police for there might be more candy that has been tampered with.
