Parents- you may want to check your children’s trick or treat Halloween haul again. Before we get into the details of this particular story, it’s important to get some details clear. The long-standing myths about people putting drugs, poison, or other hazards in Halloween candy are largely untrue. Except for this one guy who hid a lot of fentanyl in candy bags, and tried to get them through security at a major US airport.
On October 19th, an unidentified individual ran off after his bags went through TSA security screening. While no one likes to have to jump through security hoops, running away is not the normal reaction. Of course, most people also aren’t trying to smuggle 12,000 fentanyl pills through the security checkpoint, either.
In this particular instance, the alleged smuggler tried to hide the pills in various bags and boxes of candy. What kinds of candy? Well, authorities claim they were found in packages of Skittles, Sweetarts, and Whoppers. Whoppers was probably a poor choice though, considering no one in their right mind would waste space carrying Whoppers around. Authorities used this incident to remind parents to inspect their children’s Halloween candy for signs of tampering.
Drug smuggling is nothing new, and people have gone through great lengths of engineering and health risks to smuggle things through airports. Earlier this year, a man tried to smuggle gold through a hairpiece, and his rectum.
In terms of poisoned Halloween candy, there is only one major case that has been documented. In1974, Ronald Clark O’Bryan killed his own son, for the sake of insurance money. He did so through planting poisoned Pixy Stix in his son’s candy bag. No other children were harmed, and no other incidents of this kind have been confirmed in the United States.
So, if something in your Halloween haul looks like it’s been tampered with, don’t eat it.
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