this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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1/2 a billion people ( including all that lived), over half a century, have not reported one case of poison during an annual trek by millions of vulnerable people ?
During a night where there are thousands of crimes of all sorts .
I prefer to think of it as a lack of published information
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.