I don’t know anyone who has been or has had a kid sickened by anything on Halloween outside of overconsumption. I don’t even know anyone who inadvertently got food poisoning, though after the fifteenth candy bar, barfing has ensued once or twice.
Nor, dear Denver Police Department, have I heard of any kid getting marijuana-laced anything while trick-or-treating (though there have been plenty of teens looking forward to the possibility over the decades).
I doubt you do either, though I’d love to hear otherwise.
Nevertheless, Halloween is the season where rumors of foul treatment of innocent children run amok. Those rumors and frights catch on because they seem soooooooooo plausible.
After all, you have an innocent and ignorant (naturally so) child, a world full of strangers and lots and lots of parental fears to play off of. Especially since fearful parents would, apparently, rather risk their kids getting poisoned than deprive them of the tradition.
So, it seems inevitable that it must have happened or that it will happen. That’s what’s going on in the heads of Denver cops and the parents beating the drums of the recent marijuana fear.
Potheads are jerks, aren’t they?
After all, marijuana candy does look just like regular candy … soooooo … the logic is clear: Someone WILL poison children with marijuana given half the chance, because people are jerks. And, hell, it’s not like the kid could tell the difference. Not to mention, if someone wanted to really give marijuana a bad rap, they’d poison kids just to make the point that edibles are LIKE candy and so a danger to children. Let’s hope their politics takes a backseat to decency!
Never mind that those marijuana candies have been widely available in unregulated packaging that looked more like mainstream candy for at least a decade through medical marijuana stores.
It’s legal now, so clearly catastrophe is upon us.
Running counter to what appears obvious to everyone, a new study by the CATO Institute — Marijuana Policy in Colorado — found not only hasn’t legal weed caused crime and teen pot use to skyrocket, it’s had almost no effect whatsoever outside of pumping “non-trivial tax revenue” into state coffers.
The evidence provided here suggests that marijuana policy changes in Colorado have had minimal impact on marijuana use and the outcomes sometimes associated with use. This does not prove that other legalizing states will experience similar results, nor that the absence of major effects will continue. Such conclusions must await additional evidence from Colorado, Washington, and future legalizing states, as well as more statistically robust analyses that use non-legalizing states as controls.
But the evidence here indicates that strong claims about Colorado’s legalization, whether by advocates or opponents, are so far devoid of empirical support.
Our cultural training (Just say No … War on Drugs … Refer Madness) tells us that legal marijuana HAS to be dangerous.
So, Jacob Sullum, a contributor to Forbes and editor of Reason magazine, did his dead-level best to track down marijuana poisoning of trick-or-treaters and found one case where, as SFGate.com explained in 2000, marijuana buds in candy wrappers were given to kids:
Hercules police have cracked the case of the pot-stuffed Snickers bars that were unwittingly handed out on Halloween.
It turns out that the treats were the product of a failed and undetected attempt to mail 5 ounces of marijuana to someone in San Francisco, said Hercules Police Chief Mike Tye.
“Somebody tried to mail it and didn’t have enough postage or the address was wrong,” he said.
Because the package, which contained four bags of Snickers bars destined for San Francisco, did not have a return address, it landed in the dead-letter office — where it was taken by a postal employee who planned to hand the candies out to trick-or-treaters.
“Not only was the marijuana distribution inadvertent, but no one would mistake marijuana buds for a Snickers bar once the package was opened. Press coverage of the incident may nevertheless have fed rumors about malicious strangers trying to trick kids into ingesting cannabis,” Sullum wrote.
Nevertheless, Denver Police have been beating the drums of panic about marijuana infused candies getting into the Halloween bags of trick-and-treaters.
What the Denver Police Department said on its Facebook page: “With Halloween fast approaching, Colorado citizens are in a unique position in the country–watching our kid’s candy for marijuana edibles. Learn how some marijuana edibles can be literally identical to their name-brand counterparts, and get a reminder about sweets safety for all your little trick or treaters this year.”
It’s not bad information, mind you, and … sure … it could happen. But, the chances have to be on a par with regular ol’ poisoning, rumored cases of which have been widely disseminated and soundly discredited.
Hysteria, thy name is NYTimes?
Among the hard-to-kill rumors of jerks poisoning kids is a Oct. 28, 1970, story in the New York Times titled “Those Treats May Be Tricks“:
“Those Halloween goodies that children collect this weekend on their rounds of “trick-or-treating” may bring them more horror than happiness,” the story begins and then climbs right into bed with the devil known as “Fear.” (See the gallery above for the juicy parts.)
What cultural ills are behind such wanton abuse of children on this holiday for children? That Times article found the answer:
(Dr. Reginald Steen of Hempstead, New York, a psychiatrist who is chairman of the committee on Mental Hygiene of the Medical Society of the State of New York) said that one reason the incidents might have been increasing in the last few years was because of “the permissiveness in today’s society,” which he said has resulted in “people getting away with more and more violence.”
“The people who give harmful treats to children see criminals and students in campus riots getting away with things,” he said, “so they think they can get away with it, too.”
And now marijuana is legal in two states, so clearly those campus rioters will poison children with it — so watch out!
Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
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Gallery: Add marijuana edibles to historic Halloween hysteria
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