• Plum@lemmy.worldOPM
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    25 days ago

    This guy has done years of research, going through decades of local news, to find mention of Halloween candy incidents. While there is always room for error, suspicious deaths are generally reported at the local level, and the available data support the findings that nobody is out there poisoning children on Halloween.

    They die by violence, by accident, by misadventure. Not by eating a piece of candy with a slightly defective wrapper.

    • actually@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      I read that too a while back, and i believed it for years. Now, I’m just not sure.

      I’m not saying it happens a lot… but

      Outside the fact it’s just hard to tamper most commercially packaged candy. There seems to a taboo about poison in this county. People will be glad to shoot me but god forbid they touch mah diabetes causing candy.

      But social taboo works both ways, and it alters the self reporting. I remember a few times I have seen local authorities not wanting to call adult poisoning that. Then later it was

      And, despite the movies, poison food usually does not kill. Often altered food merely gives discomfort that hard to tell from food borne illness.

      So, although trick or treating is probably one of the safest activities one can do here, and doubtless many want to think it completely safe. It’s probably safer than riding on the freeway

      • Plum@lemmy.worldOPM
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        24 days ago

        102 people died daily in 2016 in motor vehicle accidents.

        Local authorities waiting for a full tox panel before announcing cause of death, or reversing, or dithering, is no cause for alarm

        Consumer protection laws are No Joke.

        We’re pretty safe on Halloween, all things considered.