For parents of tricks or treats, this is the caution that stays close.
Halloween candy infected with needles, poison or anything else harmful inside, and goes back almost to the tradition of trick or treating.
But a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, Joel Best, has spent more than two decades seeking to reassure parents that this is not a maximum-probability scenario. speaking to reporters about an examination he made in 1983 to determine the veracity of claims that young people had been poisoned or injured through the candy he received a sleath of hands.
“In the end, I didn’t discover any evidence that a child was killed or injured by an infected treat collected in a trap,” he said.
Best tested the policy of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune until 1958 to see if there had been verified incidents and discovered none. He has continued his studies each and every year since then and has yet to discover any. , even if the parents’ fears persist.
“That conclusion still stands,” he said. A guy poisoned his son in Texas in the 1970s, but when I do that, I don’t tell that. People are worried about the local guy, not about poisoning their own children.
So where does this sack man at the end of the street come from?they have become popular after World War II as a way to fight pranksters who faint.
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This doctor understands me: How many Halloween candy do you eat?The doctor tells the young people to “eat whatever you want. “
“Halloween had been celebrated through teenagers who went out and committed minor acts of vandalism, overturned outdoor toilets and things like that and the communities were fed up, so they made the decision that we were going to regularize this, we’re going to decide on a specific day and the kids are going to walk around in costumes and things like that, “I’m going to walk around in costumes and things like that,” Said.
“In the early 1950s, there were stories that some nasty people heated penny coins on stoves and then poured them into the outstretched hands of a scammer or a caterer. I don’t know if it happened, but that was the story that young people are in danger is there from the beginning. “
Fear increased in the 1960s and peaked in the 1970s, Best thinks.
“But it continues,” 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 end that and next year, the hounds call me and ask me for a quote.
And when you break down what genuine concern is, Best airs, it’s a bit ridiculous.
“The confidence you have is that at the back of the block there’s so crazy that it poisons random little ones,” he says, “but it’s so well wrapped that it 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 wear this year) run around unattended. It’s a smart concept to keep in mind just allowing kids to make treats in homes they know or go to some other. site such as a shopping mall or network event.
And while Best said he didn’t check his children’s Halloween candy, he doesn’t object to it as a precaution.
“I’m not sure my wife hasn’t checked the treats,” he said of his own children.
Many studies have highlighted the danger of pedestrians, especially young people, being hit by cars on Halloween.
“There are kids who come to the emergency room and have genuine disorders with Halloween,” Best said. “They just weren’t poisoned. “