Law enforcement organizations — despite the fact they employ many community-oriented, hard-working, good people — must generate hysteria about drugs to maintain the War on Drugs. In fact, entire federal agencies derive most of their budgets from drug-war-related efforts, such as the DEA, for example. Claiming that drug traffickers are purposely targeting children, marketing fentanyl as candy, is one way these agencies have generated drug-related hysteria as of recent.
This recent wave of hysteria about “rainbow fentanyl” and “fentanyl candy” — and ideas that fentanyl may end up in children’s Halloween candy — started on August 30th, when the DEA put out this press release:
The Ruse Continues
Law enforcement agencies — in this case, the Connecticut branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office — continued to generate hysteria about “rainbow fentanyl” with press releases like this September 23 report:
Here’s the Facts of That Case:
As you can read in the screenshot above, two Maryland residents took a 300-mile drive to Connecticut to sell an undercover DEA agent roughly 15,000 counterfeit opioid tablets containing fentanyl.
When preparing illicit drugs for transport, high-level drug traffickers across the globe frequently disguise drugs in regular consumer goods — including pineapples in Spain, oranges in Lebanon, and avocados elsewhere. This is done to evade authorities. These shipments never end up in the hands of end-users — even on accident.
The two Maryland residents, before driving to Connecticut, divided those 15,000 tablets into several boxes of Nerds and few king-size Skittles bags, as seen in this Fox News post:
The number of tablets involved indicates this is a high-level “drug trafficking” operation — in other words, at this stage of shipment, such product was never intended for end-user consumption. If sold to someone other than a DEA agent, the recipient would get rid of the candy packaging as soon as they got home, and long before the tablets were ever sold to end-users.
Thus, claiming that the two Maryland residents were targeting children is totally bogus!
Will Fentanyl End Up in your Kid’s Halloween Candy in 2022?
In case you forgot, poisoned candy myths have been spread across the United States for decades now.
The idea of fentanyl somehow ending up in Halloween candy is this year’s rendition of a tale told seemingly every year, that goes something like this: “Strangers are putting X in candy and giving it to children. Watch out!“
The Verdict? Unlikely…
Still, “there has never been a single documented case of a deranged individual randomly poisoning children’s Halloween candy,” says Psychology Today.
While you should take general sanitary precautions every Halloween, like washing your hands before digging into your sugary stash, COVID-19 should be much more of a concern than anything.
Still Worried About Fentanyl?
If you or someone you know uses drugs, they should have access to fentanyl test strips! Fentanyl test strips are simple, thin, paper-based strips that identify fentanyl in samples of drugs. They were decriminalized in Tennessee earlier this year, in March.
Although everyone who uses drugs has a use for fentanyl test strips, these are especially useful for people who don’t use drugs often — and, therefore, don’t have a tolerance to opioids like fentanyl. They work kinda like dipstick pregnancy tests or instant urine drug screens — showing two red lines for positive results, and one red line for negative results.
We’re Giving Away 1,000 Fentanyl Test Strips by Christmas
Interested in getting free fentanyl test strips? If you live in Tennessee, you qualify! Thanks to a generous donation from WiseBatch, we’ve got plenty of fentanyl test strips to go around.
Learn more about getting free fentanyl test strips here: How to Request Supplies
Learn more about fentanyl in Tennessee: Tennessee Decriminalizes Fentanyl Test Strips