Issue date: 10/27/06 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Julian Lim

Trick or treating is safe even though the media talks about the stories of poisoned candy and razor blades in apples. This does not happen that often. In one case of poisoned candy that happened in 1974 in Houston, Texas, the parents themselves poisoned their children's candy so they could murder their children and collect money on their child's insurance. The father, Ronald Clark O'Bryan, planted cyanide-laced candy in his son Timothy's pile of Halloween candy in order to claim the $20,000 in life insurance. He also gave some of the candy to his daughter Elizabeth but she did not eat any of it.
In another case in 1970, a family did it to protect a heroin-addicted uncle whose 5-year old nephew got into his heroin stash and ate it and died. Razor blades, pins and needles in apples and candy have happened, but rarely.
In order to discourage people from celebrating Halloween, a religious publisher named Jack Chick has published Christian comic books that claims an organized group of Satanists place razor and needles in candy to sacrifice children. Generally, people take these comics and throw them away because they believe it leads to the hysteria.
In the movie Halloween 2, a young boy is shown in the emergency room with a razor blade embedded in his mouth as a result of trick or treating. The emergency room workers in the film treat this as something that happens every day.
When it comes to trick or treating, children are more at risk to drunk drivers running them over than child molesters, serial killers, kidnappers and people who give out tainted candy. Children are more at risk at being run over by a drunk driver on Halloween because adults go out to Halloween parties and consume alcohol, leave the party and drive home while intoxicated.
Another reason children are at risk of being run over on Halloween is they do not have a flashlight or reflective strips of tape on their costumes. Cars kill four times as many child pedestrians on Halloween night than other nights of the year, according to a report issued by the Centers for Disease control and prevention.
Not every house in your neighborhood has a child molester, serial killer or a kidnapper. Sure, children have been molested, killed or kidnapped by someone on Halloween but people are molested, killed or kidnapped every day. Just because someone was molested, killed or kidnapped on Halloween it does not mean it's that important just because it happened on Halloween because these types of things happen almost every day somewhere in the world. The reasons why trick or treating is safe is because stories of children eating tainted candy in reality doesn't happen that often and because children are molested, killed and kidnapped on the other 364 days of the year.

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