The myth of the poisoned Halloween candy: Here's how often kids are actually injured from their trick-or-treat stash
For parents of trick-or-treaters, it’s the warning that always stays close.
Tainted Halloween candy with needles, poison or something else dangerous inside. And it goes back almost as long as the tradition of trick-or-treating.
But one professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, Joel Best, has spent more than two decades trying to reassure parents that this isn’t a likely scenario. And every year he has spent most of the days before Halloween talking to reporters about a study he did in 1983 tracking the accuracy of claims that children had been poisoned or injured by candy acquired from trick-or-treating.
“The bottom line was I couldn’t find any evidence that any child had been killed or injured by a contaminated treat picked up trick-or-treating,” he said.
Best looked at the coverage in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune back to 1958 to see if there were any verified incidents and found none. He has continued the research every year since and has still found none - even as parents’ fears continue.
“That conclusion still holds,” he said. “A guy poisoned his son in Texas in the 1970s but when I’m doing that I don’t count this. People are worried about the guy down the block, not poisoning their own children.”
So where did this boogyman down the street come from? Best said it’s not clear where it originated but it goes back really almost as far as the tradition of trick-or-treating. According to Best, trick-or-treating really became popular after World War II as a way to combat pranksters coming out.
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“Halloween had often been celebrated by adolescent boys going out and committing minor acts of vandalism, tipping outhouses over and things like that and communities got fed up with it so they decided we’re going to regularize this, we’re going to pick a particular day and kids are going to go around in costumes and stuff,” he said.
“By the early 1950s there are stories that some mean people heat pennies on skillets and then pour the pennies into outstretched hands of trick or treaters. I don’t know if that actually happened but that was the story. So the story that kids are in danger are there right from the beginning.”
The fear picked up in the 1960s and peaked in the 70s, Best thinks.
“But it really lives on,” he said. “I’ve been doing this interview for 37 years - and it’s the same interview. It doesn’t matter. You think you’re going to kill this and next year there are reporters calling me up and asking me for a quote.”
And when you break down what the actual fear is, Best points out, it is a little ridiculous.
"The belief that you have is that down the block there’s somebody so crazy that he will poison little children at random," he says, "but he is so tightly wrapped he will only do it one day a year.”
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But that doesn’t mean it’s safe to let little goblins and gremlins (or whatever your kids are dressed up this year) run around without supervision. It's always smart to consider only letting children trick-or-treat at houses they know or going to an alternate site like a shopping mall or community event.
And though Best said he didn't check the Halloween candy of his children, he's not against it as a precaution.
"I'm not sure my wife didn't check the treats," he said of his own kids.
Multiple studies have pointed to the danger of pedestrians - especially children - being hit by cars on Halloween.
“There are these kids showing up in the emergency room that have genuine Halloween-related problems,” Best said. “They just haven't been poisoned.”