‘Ludicrous’ Rainbow Fentanyl Distribution At Halloween, Experts Say!
Halloween 2022 has become real and scary in the United States as there is panic everywhere because of rainbow fentanyl. The appearance of rainbow-colored fentanyl has generated concerns that the drug is being used to lure minors.
However, experts call the news completely foolish and assure that parent got nothing to worry about. During the trick-or-treat tradition of Halloween, there has often been a suspicion that Halloween candy will be poisoned although there is no proof of this.
Different Opinions About Rainbow Fentanyl
People have made it a practice to raise concerns about how drugs like needles or marijuana edibles are put inside candies used for the trick-or-treat tradition. But it is different this time says Joel Best.
Best is a professor in Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware and has been into research regarding candies used in the Halloween treat.
Best opined that this year has been very noteworthy because famous people have drawn attention to a specific risk, which is the threat posed by rainbow fentanyl. This, according to Best, is absolutely strange.
Best who takes up interviews with the media every year to talk about Halloween drug pranks remarked that this year interview requests came in as early as September. This is weird since every year the interview requests start only two weeks before Halloween.
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warned that fentanyl was given to children in the form of rainbow-colored candies. The alarming concern among parents regarding rainbow fentanyl came in soon after the Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel raised an issue regarding this during a Fox News interview in September.
Best has not found any proof of fake candies being used to kill or harm children. The only exception was the incident of a father poisoning his son’s Halloween candy in Texas back in the 1970s. He, therefore, calls this totally foolish and says that nobody would give such drugs to small kids.
The director of the University of Washington’s Center for Community-Engaged Drug Education, Epidemiology and Research, Dr. Caleb Banta-Green, said that this story is true only in the fact that candies have pastel colors sometimes.
According to him, the goal of these drug dealers is to make the maximum profit out of the drugs they have. Hence, they would not be foolish enough to give them away for free to kids who definitely do not have the money to pay the dealers. Therefore, he confirms that children cannot be the target audience of these dealers.
The Associate Professor from the University of Buffalo, David Herzberg, who studies drug abuse history in the United States says that opioids can be kept inside candy boxes so as to enable easy smuggling.
Even he is of the opinion that giving rainbow fentanyl to children is a bad move because it increases the chance of arrest. Herzberg says that such an unwise move will only make the officials turn totally against the dealers because children’s lives will be put at risk.
The Fear Of Halloween Drug Treats
Herzberg claims that the fear of using drugs on children started as soon as Prohibition came in during the 1920s and continued to grow with the news of heroin in the 1960s.
According to Herzberg, this dread is motivated by extreme skepticism as well as some political objectives. The idea that drug dealers could come against children could call for more stringent laws which could come into being only with the support of people.
