this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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This guy has done years of research, going through decades of local news, to find mention of Halloween candy incidents. While there is always room for error, suspicious deaths are generally reported at the local level, and the available data support the findings that nobody is out there poisoning children on Halloween.
They die by violence, by accident, by misadventure. Not by eating a piece of candy with a slightly defective wrapper.
I read that too a while back, and i believed it for years. Now, I’m just not sure.
I’m not saying it happens a lot.. but
Outside the fact it’s just hard to tamper most commercially packaged candy. There seems to a taboo about poison in this county. People will be glad to shoot me but god forbid they touch mah diabetes causing candy.
But social taboo works both ways, and it alters the self reporting. I remember a few times I have seen local authorities not wanting to call adult poisoning that. Then later it was
And, despite the movies, poison food usually does not kill. Often altered food merely gives discomfort that hard to tell from food borne illness.
So, although trick or treating is probably one of the safest activities one can do here, and doubtless many want to think it completely safe. It’s probably safer than riding on the freeway
It's probably hard for random people to make an actually lethal piece of candy. But I'm also absolutely sure many have tried. They never make news for one reason or another. And they're too rare to make statistics either.
102 people died daily in 2016 in motor vehicle accidents.
Local authorities waiting for a full tox panel before announcing cause of death, or reversing, or dithering, is no cause for alarm
Consumer protection laws are No Joke.
We're pretty safe on Halloween, all things considered.
I wish you weren’t getting downvoted because you don’t seem to be making some wild claim — it’s not like you’re saying everyone’s out there poisoning the kids.
I think there’s merit to your argument, and even if not it makes for interesting discussion.
Thanks, it honestly took a bit of courage to reply in those comments. I have been severely bashed by others about this very topic since the 1990s, so eventually I just went with the flow. There seems to be a large group of people, now and then, who were improperly scared and restricted by overprotective parents who made similar arguments to justify their bad parenting decisions. Or seen their friends restricted.
It actually touches on why there are not so many kids playing today outside, unsupervised. All these baseless fears
So, for many, anything that reminds them of that, is going to get a good downvote or so, at the very least, if not a snarky comment. But, while I have supervised or been on several Halloweens, now that my kids are grown and the grandkids are starting new traditions, I would like to be done with these fears while not embracing the idea that everyone is kind, nice or safe. Street smarts.... etc
Its a very contentious subject, and I would not be surprised this comment will rub people the wrong way. If you want to see interesting American social dynamics, this is a prime example. Its not entirely out of the realm I would be called a bad parent or bad grandparent simply by saying what I said