By Margaret MacGillivray and Emma Diamond
On Halloween, many parents caution their children to watch out for tainted candy and strangers. However, many of these concerns have been fueled by internet hoaxes. Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware conducted a study in 1985 called “Halloween Sadism.” Joel Best studied each report of tainted candy from every Halloween between 1958 and 1984. After further investigation, Best found that most of the calls were jokes, and found no evidence that any children were killed or harmed by tainted candy.
One example is the 1990 case of a 7-year-old girl in Santa Monica who, after eating trick-or-treat candy, collapsed and died. The case prompted local police to warn parents to confiscate any candy children got on the block where the girl had been trick or treating. But toxicological tests showed no evidence of poisoning. Although people first believed that the girl’s death was due to the tainted candy, it was later proved that this wasn’t true.
Parents are also panicked about marijuana candy. They fear that people will lace Halloween candy with marijuana as an attempt to play a trick on young children. Many opponents of marijuana legalization have also voiced these concerns with little evidence backing them. While there have been cases of children ingesting marijuana when they should not have this was mostly due to second-hand marajuana consumption, not strangers’ tricks. Because of this internet-hoax-fueled fear of tainted candy, many parents want their children’s Halloween candy to be wrapped. The increased amount of wrapped candy causes an extreme amount of waste that ends up in landfills after Halloween.
Although there are some cases of tainted candy, the issue parents should actually caution their children to watch out for is car accidents. According to The Washington Post, all pedestrian children are three times as likely to be hit by a car on Halloween than on any other day of the year. This risk increases ten times for children between the ages of four and eight. Halloween is the only day of the year that shows a spike in child deaths from car accidents. Between the years 2004 and 2018, an average of 54 children in the U.S. were hit and killed on Halloween each year. This contrasts with an average of 16 kids on a typical day. There are a few main reasons for this spike in death. First, on Halloweenmany children wear costumes that partially impair their vision. Children could walk into the street, unable to see if there is a car coming. Secondly, many children cross streets unexpectedly on Halloween. Children forget about only crossing at crosswalks and walk into the street at unexpected times. This happens especially in popular trick or treating neighborhoods. A driver might hit a child before they see them or have a chance to stop. Thirdly, there are many drunk drivers on Halloween. Many adults attend parties on Halloween and drive home intoxicated afterward, which increases the risk of accidents.
The total number of children harmed on Halloween is small. It is up to parents to weigh the risks between this small chance of danger and their children’s overall happiness. If parents are going to worry about the risks of Halloween, though, they should be worried about the dangers of cars, not tainted candy.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/upshot/its-halloween-beware-urban-legends-and-cars.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-01-mn-4943-story.html