Why Halloween Candy Shouldn’t Scare You

Each Halloween, worried parents spend the treasured moments after a night of trick-or-treating sifting through candy bags looking for razor blades and cyanide. But as most drug rehab centers in San Jose and elsewhere know, this fear is quite overstated. 

Although a few abnormal events surrounding Halloween candy have occurred over the last century, no accounts have been found of a stranger poisoning candy with the intent to kill unassuming neighborhood children. 

One notable death was that of Timothy O’Bryan in 1974. As stated on Smithsonian, the eight-year-old boy had ingested a Pixie Stick laced with cyanide. Far from a prescription or a substance abused in drug rehab centers, cyanide is a chemical compound often used for murder. 

A few other contaminated Pixie Stix were found in the same area, a day’s journey from San Jose, but investigations quickly revealed that the boy’s father was responsible. 

After having taken out a substantial life insurance policy on his children just days earlier, O’Bryan had hoped to cash in after the “accidental death” of his son. This event created widespread paranoia among parents that more candy lacers were out there ready to poison children at will. 

Another famous case of Halloween candy scare tactics took place in 1970 when five-year-old Kevin Toston was found dead. Investigators found traces of heroin in his Halloween candy, but the case would later reveal that the drug came from the boy’s uncle. 

Unlike the O’Bryan murder case, Toston had simply found his uncle’s illicit drugs by accident and ingested them. Rehab centers in San Jose and other locations educate patients on the dangers of using addictive drugs, as they can often fall into the wrong hands. Such was the case for Toston. 

In an attempt to cover the uncle’s tracks, family members had sprinkled some of the remaining narcotic over the bulk of Toston’s candy to discourage suspicion. 

Aside from the fear of finding deadly drugs inside Halloween candy, razor blades and needles have crept into the American subconscious as a threat. As stated on Everyday Health, in the year 2000 a man named James Joseph Smith placed needles in Snickers Bars and handed them out on Halloween. 

However, only one teen was injured by pricking himself with a needle, and Smith was soon after prosecuted for “adulterating a substance with intent to cause death, harm or illness.”

Overall, much of the paranoia associated with unsafe Halloween candy is in reality a ghost story. Drug rehab centers never deal with patients who became addicts as unsuspecting kids on Halloween night. Parents in family-friendly areas such as San Jose might do better worrying about stomachaches than lethal Laffy Taffy.

Emily Culp is a health writer reporter for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. Information provided by Miramar Recovery Center. Follow on Twitter