The Story About THC-Laced Halloween Candy Shifts From Malevolent Strangers to Careless Parents
When you put candy in bowls for trick-or-treaters tonight, remember that you might need nut-free options for kids with allergies. You also might also want to consider including gummies or lollipops for kids who don’t eat chocolate. And don’t forget: You must be careful not to accidentally mix your expensive marijuana edibles in with the cheap, less psychoactive bundles of sugary goodness you bought at Target or Walmart.
If you think that last reminder is not only gratuitous but also an insult to your intelligence, you are not alone. But this is the latest spin on perennial warnings about the supposed hazards of cannabis candy on Halloween, and it actually represents an improvement.
For nearly two decades, alarmist government officials, abetted by credulous reporters, have been warning parents prior to Halloween that malevolent strangers might try to get their kids high by passing off THC-infused treats as ordinary candy. These alerts are a version of the old urban legends about razor blades, needles, and glass shards hidden inside Halloween candy, and they are equally grounded in reality.
“We didn’t find a single case of a person purposefully giving children marijuana edibles on Halloween in an attempt to harm them,” Snopes writer Dan Evon reported in October 2021. That assessment is consistent with what I have found every time I have compared the breathless annual advisories about this purported danger to reports of actual cases. Those reports are almost always misrepresentations of qualitatively different phenomena, such as middle-schoolers who deliberately consumed marijuana gummies, Japanese candy in wrappers decorated with maple leaves that cops mistook for cannabis leaves, and a guy who “filled empty marijuana packets with [ordinary] gummy bears” after “he ran out of Halloween candy.”
The incident that most closely resembles the scenario imagined by cops like Bureau County, Illinois, Sheriff James Reed (who erroneously claimed that Crunch Choco Bars made in Japan contained THC) happened two years ago in Canada. A Winnipeg couple, 63-year-old Sheldon Chochinov and 52-year-old Tammy Sigurdur, was accused of handing out marijuana edibles such as “THC infused Nerds candy” to trick-or-treaters, which they said was an honest mistake.
Last March, CBC News reported, Sigurdur “was sentenced to pay a total of $5,000 in fines as part of a joint recommendation accepted by a judge for her role in handing out the cannabis edibles.” Here is how CBC News describes what happened: “Without her glasses on, Sigurdur filled plastic zipped sandwich bags with various candy and gum she found in the closet—not realizing about a dozen of the bags had edibles in them before she gave them to her husband to hand out at the door.”
The dearth of cases in which people deliberately tried to dose children on Halloween has led to a noticeable change in warnings from law enforcement agencies, public health officials, and news outlets. They now typically emphasize the potential for accidental confusion, as opposed to malicious pranks.
These advisories still highlight the similarities between the packaging of some edibles (usually not state-authorized products) and the packaging of national candy brands. Any reasonably alert adult is bound to notice the differences, such as cannabis leaves, THC content labels, conspicuous warnings about “intoxicating effects,” and descriptors like “medicated,” “infused,” and “medical marijuana.” Kids, by contrast, are apt to be less careful, which is why they sometimes unknowingly consume marijuana edibles that adults have failed to keep out of their reach.
This is a real and obvious hazard, but it is not limited to October. Yet news outlets, prompted by the official warnings we always hear this time of year, cannot resist the Halloween angle.
“As Halloween approaches,” Highland County, Ohio, Health Commissioner Jared Warner said in one such missive this month, “I wanted to talk about something important. With legal cannabis/marijuana edibles being relatively new to Ohio, official statistics are scarce. However, Cincinnati Drug and Poison Control informed our health department staff that they receive approximately 2-3 daily calls regarding accidental THC poisonings involving children consuming edibles.”
Why is Halloween relevant? “With Halloween around the corner,” Warner explained, “many homes will be filled with candy—and sometimes THC products can look just like the treats our kids love. This makes it easy for our kids to grab something they shouldn’t while searching for snacks.”
It is “easy,” of course, only if parents are negligent. Warner is basically telling parents who carelessly leave marijuana edibles scattered about the house to stop doing that, which is eminently sensible but might not have much i
Article from Reason.com
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