
Where Did the Fear of Poisoned Halloween Candy Come From? (2013) - ctoth
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonianmag/where-did-the-fear-of-poisoned-halloween-candy-come-from-822302/?no-ist
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ronilan
My kids are very aware that Halloween candy may be poisoned. Every year, after
they finish trick-or-treating they will lay the buckets of candy on the table
for inspection[1]. I will then taste several packs to make sure they are safe.
If I do not show any side effects we conclude that the candy eaten was good.
The kids wait patiently for a couple of weeks as I repeat the process and
certify that all the candy they brought was indeed safe. Then I serve the kids
salad.

[1]
[https://instagram.com/p/BMQMFqAjuKr/](https://instagram.com/p/BMQMFqAjuKr/)

~~~
jdavis703
This actually just sounds like a really elaborate "tax" on your children's
stash. If you fear the candy is actually dangerous, then perhaps you'd be
better off just buying some from the store and distributing it to your kids,
that ways they don't run the risk of loosing their parent.

~~~
agoodthrowaway
Clearly his post was humorous and intended to poke fun at people's paranoia of
poisoned candy.

~~~
wavefunction
Actually I think OP is implying he just eats all of his kids' Halloween candy
and serves them salad instead.

~~~
heartbreak
Which is exactly what my mom did, minus the salad. Now I eat all the candy
instead of handing it out. Thanks mom.

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joshfraser
Despite the constant fear mongering of "stranger danger", turns out most
people don't actually want to kill you.

One of the things I like about the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc) is that
we're slowly being reminded that it's okay to trust our neighbors, despite the
constant attempts by the media to spread fear.

~~~
NegativeLatency
Except when you neighbors are the ones renting out the apartment next to you
on air bnb, and you have drunk noisy people bumping around next door all the
time.

~~~
filoleg
I don't see how it is different from having noisy drunk people as your
permanent neighbors. Ultimately, your non-airbnb permanent neighbors are just
as much of a stranger to you, with certain specific exceptions.

~~~
flukus
Your permanent neighbors tend to be noisy and drunk occasionally, people
renting an airbnb are on holidays and likely to be noisy and drunk, then a
week later you'll get a new batch likely to be noisy and drunk.

~~~
baddox
But does anyone oppose reasonable rules for time-of-day-based noise levels in
an apartment or neighborhood? It really doesn’t matter if your permanent
neighbors or transient guests are the ones making the noise, either should
cause the property owner/renter to get fined/evicted.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> But does anyone oppose reasonable rules for time-of-day-based noise levels
in an apartment or neighborhood?_

Even if this were a viable solution, it does nothing for the lost sleep during
the months (or in may case, full year) it takes to establish these rules and
get them consistently enforced.

Also, it's not a viable solution. There are a couple huge problems.

First, evicting _owners_ is no small thing. In fact, neither is evicting
renters. In fact, neither is _fining_ owners/renters for sums of money that
would actually cause a change in behavior. These are all very expensive
options of last resort that are likely to end in lawyer fees.

Second, with notable exceptions, HOAs/land lords dislike playing
mediator/enforcer (and for good reason -- see below). So rules are hard to
make and harder to enforce.

Third, there's a real cost imposed on any community that tries to legislate
"be a normal neighbor". If you want an enumeration of the potential downsides
of this approach, talk to anyone who has had a bad experience with an over-
zealous HOA.

You could try to make and enforce a set of rules in a way that solves the
problem but doesn't drive normal neighbors insane with pedantic/vindictive
rule-violation-reporting. But it turns out that's a rather hard set of rules
to come up with/fairly enforce. It's just much easier and, frankly, more
effective, to ban airbnb et al.

I'm not opposed to apartment sharing on principle, and in fact my personal
political philosophy should bias me toward defending the practice. But my
actual experience makes me wary of buildings/neighborhoods that allow airbnb.
If airbnb doesn't figure out a solution to this problem, they're going to face
increasing resistance.

~~~
baddox
> Even if this were a viable solution, it does nothing for the lost sleep
> during the months (or in may case, full year) it takes to establish these
> rules and get them consistently enforced.

I don't understand that argument. It might make months to establish a ban or
effective enforcement of temporary tenants as well. Obviously that sucks, but
I'm just trying to think about which rule would be more effective and
reasonable.

> First, evicting owners is no small thing. In fact, neither is evicting
> renters. In fact, neither is fining owners/renters for sums of money that
> would actually cause a change in behavior. These are all very expensive
> options of last resort that are likely to end in lawyer fees.

Again, I don't understand. Those are the exact same options we have to
disincentivize owners/renters taking in temporary tenants. What alternative
enforcement mechanism are you suggesting?

It seems like you're focusing on the difficulties in enforcing my suggestion
without recognizing that literally the exact same difficulties exist in
enforcing your suggestion.

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Theodores
Seems that Wikipedia is a better starting point:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths)

I would date my understanding of the myth to be from 1980, informed by a
friend's mum, so the myth was oral tradition by then, across the pond in the
UK. So a handful of years after 1974 the meme had spread.

This had morphed into an 'only in America' story for those of us outside the
U.S. - we believed this happened on a regular Halloween basis in America and
was part of 'trick or treating' (itself more American than British). Imagine
the image of 'gun mad' America harbouring such 'psychos' in the community,
this was easy to do if you had never been to the U.S.

The idea of a razor blade in some type of sweet did do the rounds, again in
the 'made in America' context, with the myth spreading verbally. As children
adults would tell you but you took reassurance that there were no crazies like
that where you lived, again, only in America.

Sweets given to you as a child could be of variable quality. Sweets with a
clove in the middle do exist, I think at the time I would have preferred the
razor blade option, cyanide would have tasted better. Sweets kept past their
sell by date might not be too good either, old folks could hand you these and
expect you to enjoy them. So 'trick or treat' was actually part of the deal
with all sweets offered by neighbours and other people you were to meet. It
was therefore imaginable for the American myth to be true.

~~~
_Wintermute
> This had morphed into an 'only in America' story for those of us outside the
> U.S. - we believed this happened on a regular Halloween basis in America

As an outsider I never got the impression that this actually happened/happens
in America, more that this is some strange fear American's have.

------
ebcode
I remember being a kid (8 or 9) and sitting down with my friend at his house
with his parents and going through all our candy together to check for danger
signs. Sure enough, there was a single-wrapped Reese's peanut-butter cup with
a hole in the wrapper, and we opened it up and found a sewing needle stuck
inside the peanut-butter cup. (I don't think I'm making this up, but memories
being what they are, this might have been a story that was told to me. I do
remember vividly the breaking of the peanut-butter cup into two pieces and the
needle falling on the table, though, so I'm inclined to believe the memory.)

This would have been in the late 1980s. So, in my case, the fear did not come
from the media, but from a personal experience.

So rather than saying, "this never happens, it's just a myth", we should be
saying, "this can happen, and let's take steps to protect ourselves".

Anyone remember the Tylenol Poisonings[0]? That was real, inspired copycats,
and led to tamper-resistant and tamper-evident packaging. Tragic, but at least
we learned from the tragedy.

While it's true that not _everyone_ is out to get you, at the same time it's
foolish to think that _no-one_ is out to get you.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders)

~~~
cutcss
Believe it or chewing a sewing needle don't actually kills you; but sure you
can be afraid of anything and still get validation of that fear; you know a
lot of people die from heavy objects falling from buildings? You should
protect from that too, it has happened before so clearly you should take steps
to protect yourself (and it has happened a lot more than candy poisoning),
perhaps always using a construction helmet would be a nice first step. And
traffic accidents, so many pedestrians die from car accidents that its weird
we all don't have personal airbags around our torsos and heads; at the end of
the day being alive its the biggest risk factor of dying and the only sure way
to not die is to be already death.

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WalterBright
It's been going on longer than the article suggests. When I went trick-or-
treating in the 1960s, my parents did not allow us to eat anything that was
home-made or not in a sealed package, because they were worried about
deliberate poisoning.

Around 1972 or 73 on Halloween, some neighborhood kid found a razor blade in
an apple. Turned out he'd inserted it himself as a prank.

A lot of things have much earlier roots than can be found with searches of
documents.

~~~
jeffwass
Back in 2nd grade my friend got a small snickers bar at school that he
discovered had a hole in the wrapper and a same size/shape hole also extending
further into the candy bar. I recall it being a small squarish kind of hole,
you could sort of see it going into the candy bar.

No idea if he did it himself or not, but he never admitted it. It could easily
have been some part of a toy that poked into it.

After school we went to his house and cut it to pieces with a knife in his
kitchen. It was an exciting adventure, we were eager to see what might be
inside. Never found anything, though I'm not sure what we were expecting to
find.

We didn't eat it either. But it did freak me out enough as a kid that for
awhile after I would check for candy wrapper breaches.

~~~
amigoingtodie
Sounds like a pencil stabbed it.

------
II2II
Fears aside, I suspect that the larger tragedy is that Halloween treats are
now mostly sugary candy and chocolate. I remember a time when there was much
more variety. I also remember how quickly things changed after the first
(likely unsubstantiated) scare in my community.

~~~
analog31
The only variety that I can remember as a kid, was the house on the next
street where they gave out Chick Tracts instead of candy.

~~~
hexane360
It seems a little counterintuitive to hand out anti-halloween material to
trick-or-treaters. I mean, it's still observing Halloween even if it's not
candy you're giving out.

~~~
rhizome
Proselytizers gonna proselytize.

------
8ig8
And then there’s this headline today on my local news website...

Candy laced with bath salts poses risk this Halloween

[http://www.wral.com/candy-laced-with-bath-salts-poses-
risk-t...](http://www.wral.com/candy-laced-with-bath-salts-poses-risk-this-
halloween/17066038/)

~~~
jdavis703
No one is spending their money to give your kids free drugs on Halloween. I
saw a similar story from the local news channel about marijuana edibles being
passed out. As the original article says, poisoned candy is not really a
thing. I'd be more concerned about your kids being hit by a drunk (or
distracted) driver on Halloween than eating something poisoned.

~~~
13of40
Someone gave my brother a marijuana cookie one time when he was about nine,
but it wasn't on Halloween. Seems like giving out edibles from your own house
would be an easy way to get a mob of pitchfork-weilding parents on your lawn.

~~~
wavefunction
The professionally produced kind are all labeled on the actual food surface
with some sort of impression or imprint that's unmistakable unless you're
completely innocent of any knowledge of the world.

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afarrell
If anyone knows of a good general technique to persuade a person that their
fear of something is overblown, I'd be interested in seeing a link.

In my experience, trying to do this results in anger.

~~~
zaroth
I find the same attitude has now permiated American politics. You can say
something as neutral as, "I'm very cautious of getting riled up by overblown
narratives that lack factual evidence or are presented in an obviously
inflammatory manner" and suddenly you're the anti-Christ.

~~~
throwaway413
Right, the second you are skeptical of their “source” you are the enemy. No
room for doubt.

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JasonFruit
So the answer here is, apparently, "Dunno." I could imagine an article on this
topic that would be valuable, but I don't think this is it.

------
simonblack
If you're going asking for a 'trick or treat', you have to expect as many
'tricks' as 'treats'. That's part of the 'fun' of it.

The donors are not forced to give you 'treats' every time. If you can't accept
that, don't go out asking.

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moxious
If you live in a society where credulous people will accept stories like this,
it's no wonder people wouldn't know or spend time with their neighbors. I
can't help but see it as one grain of sand on a bigger beach.

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twobyfour
Pretty sure it came from movie and TV scriptwriters deciding that poisoned
candy was a wonderfully scary trope for Halloween time.

