Pubdate: Thu, 30 Oct 2014
Source: Westword (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2014 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.westword.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.westword.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616
Author: William Breathes

WILL KIDS GET POT CANDY ON HALLOWEEN?

Dear Stoner: Do you think the Denver Police Department is right, and 
kids are going to get pot candy in their bags?

Frank N. Stein

Dear Frank: Not at all. This is just an updated version of the tired 
old story that fearmongering cops - and paranoid parents - have been 
pushing since the '70s. The idea is that some mythical Halloween 
Scrooge is out to hurt kids by giving away tainted candy.

The thing is, the story isn't true; it's an urban legend.

The myth started when Ronal O'Bryan, a Houston-area father, killed 
his own child around Halloween by poisoning the boy's Pixy Stix with 
cyanide and then fingered a random stranger.

Cops quickly figured out who was to blame, though that part never 
gets reported.

The tales of people handing out poison?

Those stem from an ornery old lady in New York City in the 1960s who 
handed out bags of junk from under her sink as a joke to kids too old 
to be trick-or-treating. Everything was labeled, including the 
scouring pads and rat poison - but the myth of poison is a much better story.

And these days, the police keep the legend alive, going so far as to 
offer up X-ray services in some cities in order to hunt for razor blades.

It's a PR win for the police, since nobody ever gets sick or hurt 
from tainted candy - and the cops look like they've won a major 
public-safety battle.

And they're taking the same route this year with pot candy.

Could someone actually give an edible to a kid? Sure. But will it 
happen? Not likely.

Pot candy is way too expensive to hand out, and you'd have to be a 
really outstanding kind of idiot to give pot food to kids, anyway.

Besides - urban legend or not - what child in this Stranger Danger 
world we live in takes unwrapped candy from strangers?

But if, on the slight chance that I'm wrong and something happens 
this year, the culprits will come from one of three groups.

The first would be the same psycho assholes who would give kids 
rotten candy, poison or chocolate bars with needles inside.

The second would be the anti-pot people, looking to plant a story.

I don't really think they'd do it, but it sure would bolster their 
otherwise absurd claims that pot users have no scruples about getting 
kids hooked on "the pot" by tricking them into getting high, and 
support their claim that edibles are a scourge poisoning Colorado's 
kids (hello, prescription drugs and booze). And the third would be 
teenagers who get busted with weed candy that they somehow obtained 
from some dishonest friend or stranger and need an easy out: "I 
swear, Mom, someone just gave it to us." I know I totally would have 
used that back in the day...not that my folks would have bought it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom