This is $60 worth of candy and your child does not deserve it!Photo: Claire Lower
Much like the leaves changing, or my inbox being flooded with pumpkin spice-scented press releases, bogus hysteria around THC edibles is a sure sign that fall has finally arrived in earnest. We—or at least people on Twitter—have this conversation every single year, and yet there is always that one journalist who can’t help but “report” that your children are in danger of ingesting cleverly disguised pot-“laced” candy.
The good news is that the above tweet is being ratio’d into oblivion, with many quote tweeters pointing out the most obvious flaw in this line of thinking: THC edibles are far too expensive to hand out like candy (even though they are technically candy). I can’t speak for the country as a whole, but most weed-infused chocolate bars and gummies run around $30 per package, and I cannot think of a single child who is worthy of a $30 candy bar. (Also, these THC treats are usually very hard to open; if the giant pot leaves wouldn’t give your child pause, the packaging would.)
As Jacob Sullum of Reason.com pointed out five years ago, this is a mythical menace. It’s scare-mongering, and it almost always originates from police departments, who should never be used as a trusted source for anything, because they are known liars (especially if the topic drugs). For those of you who think these cops were motivated by pure concern for The Children, please consider the timing—two Pennsylvania lawmakers just introduced a bill to make recreational cannabis legal for adults; that happens to be the same state in which the “advisory” was recently reported.
These stories are never accompanied by any proof that the seized candy was intended to be handed it out to children, and—unless I missed a really big story—there are no documented cases of anyone giving out THC edibles in an attempt to get The Children high af.
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I am, however, all for LOOKING at your child’s Halloween haul, so you can pick out a few nice chocolates for yourself, as a reward for staying up all night to make their costume. If you happen to find a weed-“laced” candy, consider yourself very lucky, for you will surely be the first.
