It wouldn't be Halloween without some good old-fashioned scaremongering. This year it came courtesy of a Facebook post by Mississippi police warning parents to check candy closely for "brightly coloured Ecstasy tablets" that could be mixed in with the loot.
"If your kids get these for Halloween candy, they ARE NOT CANDY. They are the new shapes of Ecstasy and can kill kids through overdoses!!!" read the caption. The accompanying photo showed the drug shaped like dominoes, skulls and Superman's shield.
In my day, the talk was all about candy being laced with razors and poison. While such incidences may have happened in someone's neighbourhood at some point, most parents had enough common sense to treat such stories as the urban myths they probably were.
Year after year kids carried on trick or treating, and year after year most parents exercised the simple precaution of combing through the haul before allowing little goblins to indulge.
"When it doubt, throw it out," was the best practice then as it was now.
While I'm not expecting to find street drugs in my son's bag, I will absolutely pick out anything I don't want him to have, like hard candies. (Says the mom who choked and almost died as a child sucking on - of all things - a Life Saver.)
The odds of any kind of tampering are next to nil, not least of which because Ecstasy costs too much!
Even though the Facebook post has now been removed, it's worth the reminder to thoroughly check your kids' candy before allowing them to binge on the night. Anything suspicious or "homemade" goes straight into the bin.
R.I.P. candy apples!
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