The poisoned candy scare, from the 1970s and early 1980s, refers to a moral panic in the United States regarding the threat that children could be in danger of ingesting razor blades, needles, or poison introduced to candy by senseless, malicious tampering.

Snopes.com ranks this as an undetermined urban myth, almost categorized as "false" due to one incident in Florida, where several people at a party came ill, for various reasons, depending on the news source. In general however, the poisoned candy fright is considered to be false altogether, and certainly blown out of proportion by the news media. In the early 1980s the old legendary "poisoned candy" scare on Halloween grew to occupy a central role in the public attention, with local news stations featuring "new information" related to "what you should know" about "protecting your children."

Several cases of poisoning related to candy are known but most of them weren't valid, although they contributed to the overall panic and perhaps sparked new incidents as well.

To this day, fire departments and hospitals encourage parents to bring their Halloween candy to be x-rayed or scanned by metal detectors for inserted razors or needles.

According to advice columnist Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby), the only verified accounts of Halloween candy tampering were perpetrated by members of the victims' families.

Example quote from Snopes: "the police investigation concluded the boy had accidentally got into his uncle's heroin stash and poisoned himself and that the family had sprinkled heroin on the kid's candy after the fact to protect the uncle."

External links

• Snopes: Halloween Poisonings