Urban Legends: Is Halloween Candy Tampering a Myth?

By and large, yes, according to the best available research. Despite a very few well-publicized cases of alleged tampering during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s — nearly all of which were discovered on further investigation to be unfounded or unverifiable — no child has ever been seriously injured or killed as a result of ingesting adulterated candy, apples, or other treats collected door-to-door on Halloween.

"Since 1983, I have followed stories about contaminated Halloween treats in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune going back to 1958," said sociologist Joel Best in a 2002 interview, "and every time a case has been reported, the cause of death or injury has turned out to be something other than Halloween candy."

In one of those cases, it turned out that a child who died after allegedly eating Halloween candy laced with heroin had actually found the drug stashed in his uncle's home. In other cases, children who were initially thought to have died as a result of poisoned Halloween candy were found by pathologists to have succumbed to natural causes. And, in one of the very few incidents in which Halloween treats were actually implicated, investigators discovered that the deadly candy had been poisoned by the child's own father, who had recently taken out a life insurance policy on his son.

"Tainted Halloween candy is a contemporary legend, spread by word of mouth, with little to support it," Best concluded. Like most contemporary ("urban&quot legends, this one has more to reveal about our collective psyche than it does about real-world events. "Contemporary legends are ways we express anxiety," Best explains. This legend shows just how anxious we can be.


http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/halloween/a/Is-Halloween-Candy-Tampering-A-Myth.htm