Claim: Poisoned/tampered-with candy is just a Halloween myth

You mean all those trips to the hospital to have my candy x-rayed were needless? (Just kidding.) (TampaBay.com)

Comments

[Navy Chief]

@Jim - you know, of course, that x-rays won't detect poison? :-)

[Jim Romenesko]

I was more concerned about razor blades, of course.

[Elroy]

Smart article. Next week the author will be writing about a bunch of kids in the hospital for candy poising.

[joel]

I am glad this article was put out there.

Years ago there was a documentary called "The Culture Of Fear" that discussed many issues, including Halloween candy, where the stories and the perpetuation of the fear surrounding those stories were intentionally put into the mainstream simply to make people afraid.

If I remember correctly, the statistics regarding candy tampering was since 1967 there was ONE incident of candy tampering and it was by a family member.

It just shows how STUPID we are to believe stories like this.

[Jennay]

@ Joel- You should read Culture of Fear by Dr. Barry Glassner. If I have his name right. Brilliant book. A little shocking, really.

[MidtownCoog]

The Texas "Candy Man" killed his own son with cyanide in a pixie stix.

http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/archives/004392.html

[MidtownCoog]

D'oh! I missed the Candy Man in the article.

At any rate. You'd be crazy not to check your candy.

Partly because some of it is so nasty.

[Phranqlin]

You mean Halloween candy has almost never been tampered with? My illusions are shattered!

Next you'll be telling me that there never were any heroin needles or poisonous snakes in the ball pit at McDonald's.

[LimeGreenLizard]

Does this mean I can take candy from strangers now?

[Sigh]

The fear perpetuates itself from our innate nature. Downside risk is simply more scary - once bitten, twice shy and all that. The ape that saw a pair of eyes peering out of the undergrowth and thought "Tiger!" is still around, and the one that thought, "Well, I need a little more information before I leap to the conclusion that those are indeed the eyes of a tiger" got eaten. Even if the second ape was right 99/100 times.

[joel]

@sigh...written on paper your thoughts are right on, they just are not practical as we live and breathe and walk around interacting with others. Based on your theory we would all sit for an hour at the stop sign at the empty intersection because of the remote chance of the car appearing out of nowhere to hit us, or we would be doing fact checks on our ministers, lawyers and doctors.

The downsize risk of almost everything in life is never as scary as the actual risk that is before us. Look at any statistic of any human behavior and it will clearly show that fear usually is the only factor that prevents us from acting.

How great our society would be if the Wright Brothers would have responded to a fear of heights, or Ben Franklin's fear of being shocked or the Apollo astronauts fear of flying.

[Sigh]

Oh, I agree. The ability to overcome our innate fears is one of the benefits of being self-aware. Letting our innate predispositions dictate our behavior leads us to x-raying candy and other such nonsense.

[Sigh]

And by downside risk, I was trying to talk about the risk of facing a penalty vs. the risk of missing out on a reward. As in: Compare the risk of death vs. the risk of eating a piece of delicious food. Why would we ever risk death for candy? Well, of course, we have to eat SOMETHING.

Is halloween candy any more risky than eating at Wendy's? Nope. Both might kill you.

Adding to the fact that innately (not always rationally) we fear direct loss more than we fear opportunity cost -- we are also lousy assessors of risk. Most of the time we basically over value risk -- "I can't let my kid go over to the Joneses house because they have a gun in the house." They have a swimming pool, though. Well, your kid is many times more likely to drown in their swimming pool than get shot by their gun, and many, many more times likely to get hit by a car on the way over, too.

[American Veteran]

Mcoog,
Sammy Davis sang about him.

LGL,
dick tater is at your door.lol

BTW-Does Jim mean that there are no needles when he says "needless"?

Will they give out razor blades with apples hidden in them in polack neighborhoods?

[ellen]

If I recall correctly, there have been two verified cases of tampering reported in the last, like, 25 years. One of them, I believe, was by the children's uncle, who had poisoned candy in order to collect on life insurance he'd taken out on them (I think they were two little girls). The other case also involved a close relative, though I don't remeber the details of that one.

[Sheila]

Some years ago, a man in TX killed by poison his own little boy in order to collect on a life insurance policy he had taken out on the boy's life. He also gave a little bit of whatever poison it was to a couple of other kids to further the idea that some neighbor had given poisoned candy to children. When he was convicted of his son's murder, the judge set the intial execution date on the first anniversary of the boy's death, which was around Halloween. The man's lawyer appealed the case, meaning the execution was postponed. The appeals process finally ended; he was executed, but not on an anniversary of his child's murder.

[Anesidora]

Actually there have been cases of candy tampering. No poisonings, but needles and razors have been found.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp

[Iago]

Of the few verified cases of tampering I've heard of, it does seem always to be a relative of the child; that said, I don't think testing is going to prevent anything there, since the person's hardly apt to take the stuff in him/herself for examination.

[sometimesilie]

Remember the Aspirin poisonings of the early 80's? I think only one was of a psychopath. The rest were found to be copycats, generally people trying to knock off their spouses and cover their tracks by placing bottles of poisoned medicine on the shelves of their local drugstores, and in the process committing multiple homicides. Kudos to LE for figuring that out. Court TV.com(?) has an interesting section on this.

If I were in charge, these people would be fed their own poison, but wah, wah, wah, that's not considered "humane".

[Torgo]

Once, I was right in the middle of a Caramello when I found gold.

[Sheila]

Seven people died in 1982 after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol which had been laced with potassium cyanide. No one has ever been charged with the crime.

[Sheila]

Oops. I forgot to include "Seven people died in the Chicago area...."

[Navy Chief]

@Torgo - Liquid gold, even...

[David]

I think there have been many more cases of Fast Food tampering by employees.

[Miss-Black]

Kids stand a far greater chance of getting hit by a car and killed on Halloween than succumbing to any of this tampered candy nonsense. And if any of my neighbors are so inspired as to bake "homemade goodies," they best know that mommy will be pilfering those popcorn balls and snarfing the hell out of them. II guess if that happens, I had better ask for two.

[ReginaFilangee]

Some of us lived through the era of very first Tylenol poisonings of the 70s. It was because of them that we have tamper-resistant packaging on virtually EVERYTHING. Those poisonings were real, not limited to just one location, and several people did in fact die.

During that time, a disturbed teenager in our neighborhood told many people he intended to mix rat poison into a variety of homemade goodies and hand them out. Our neighborhood was the type where it was customary for many homes to hand out homemade fudge, brownies, cookies, etc. at Halloween. Needless to say, that practice came to a screeching halt that year....and lollipops just weren't the same to us kids.

And I know for a fact that a local veterinarian who had offered to x-ray candy for free did find some needles that had been poked through the wrapper into some candy bars and the evidence was turned over to authorities. My mother's friend (who worked there and saw it firsthand....found in the bag of a child she knew....was pretty shaken up over it.

Shockingly, there actually was a news world before the Internet was born....

[Sigh]

Regina, we can't really consider Tylenol to be Halloween candy. A threat that wasn't followed up upon can't be considered tampering. So, we are left with something that would have been BIG BIG BIG news -- needles in candy bars. They would have had to kill the reporters to get them off that story.

Each of those cases where they found needles, razors, etc. turn out to be either someone they knew (a parent, uncle, etc) or the kid themselves trying to get some attention.

Tampering with Halloween candy happens, it is just not some random act of terror. People poison each other all the time, but their motives are more direct and rational.

So, the good and bad news here is that you are better off taking candy on Halloween night from a total stranger than from your parents.

[Psyche]

Oh, please! Snopes.com already debunked the myth. They found out that the few cases of poisoned candy that existed were more like family members poisoning the children and then blaming the candy to get the heat off of them. And how the hell could you fit a razor blade into a candied apple anyway?

[ReginaFilangee]

Psyche, while snopes has a pretty good track record with checking out online email forwards, they are by no means the final word on the veracity of any hoax. ALL they are are a woman and her husband who like to track things down in their spare time...and they use mostly the Internet to do it (along with an attempted phone call from time to time.) They admit that themselves. They do not fly to small towns and interview anyone and everyone who might have some knowledge about a Halloween candy claim.

[ReginaFilangee]

Sigh, I was only citing the (verified) Tylenol poisonings because many people who weren't alive back then seem to doubt them.

As to needles in candy bars....I can only tell you what *I* heard and saw myself. When she came over to tell my mother about it, her friend was so shaken up she could barely compose herself. I had never seen her like that, and it burned itself into my memory. This was a woman I'd known for years, a rock-solid motherly type. (I was supposed to be in bed, but was known to sneak out and hang out in the upstairs hallway whenever my parents had people over after our bedtimes, night-owl and nosy child that I was.) She was further upset that when they reported the finding (including handing over the x-ray itself), it was quickly swept under the rug. Partly, she believed, to avoid scaring people....but mostly because they were pretty sure it had been done by the son of a locally prominent surgeon, one who had been known to do drugs himself and swipe needles from his dad's office. The surgeon and the mayor happened to be cousins.

Believe what you want. I know that most cases are not true and am a skeptical-by-nature person myself. But I can tell you that THAT one was for real. You won't find any news report on it, though, because it was covered up for political reasons. (Oh wait a minnit! Nawwwwwww....that NEVER happens, does it?......)

And as to the freaky teenager who threatened rat poison because everyone in the neighborhood "was mean to" him.....no one ate anything homemade that year, of course. The brownies were all thrown out, and since no one had actually eaten them, the police elected not to pursue any charges, but did talk to the parents who finally decided to have their son committed to inpatient psychiatric care as a result. You won't find any public record of that, either, but for medical privacy reasons.

[DCer]

And I know for a fact that a local veterinarian who had offered to x-ray candy for free did find some needles that had been poked through the wrapper into some candy bars and the evidence was turned over to authorities.
--------

Regina, this has been proven false time and time again! Accept that you're imagining this!

[Sigh]

Poisoning and tampering does happen -- it just isn't random (in all but a very few cases).

The Tylenol case was hard to track down, because they tampered with in secret, anonymously. Even then, if I recall correctly, they had a guy arrested or convicted, but the search of the guys house was done without a warrant or something.

Handing someone candy at the front door of your house is far from anonymous. Idiots who put metal in candy would soon be caught. And to what end? Hurt a random person, much later, and out of sight? Even a psycho doesn't get much gratification from that.

[ReginaFilangee]

DCer....the case I'm talking about was never proven false because it was never publicized---so there was nothing TO be proven false (it was covered up at a low level and never leaked)---and most of the people who knew about it firsthand are now dead anyway. It was in the 70s, and my family knew some of the people involved personally. I overheard a good bit of it myself. Just because OTHER cases like this were proven false doesn't mean they ALL were. I can't speak to any others as I don't have any personal knowledge of them.

Believe whatever you want. *shrug*
Like I said before, not everything makes the newspapers. (You might be shocked at how much doesn't make the news, in fact.)

[ReginaFilangee]

Sigh, the guy I'm talking about was evidently on an LSD trip at the time. Who knows why people on drugs do weird things?