The St. Louis Division of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) just issued a warning for kids going trick or treating tonight in Missouri, Kansas, and Southern Illinois. Watch out for dangerous candy. In particular, the DEA is warning folks to watch out for suspicious looking candies that could be laced with meth and—in good old Reefer Madness-style—weed.
DEA’s Warning About Dangerous Candy
The DEA St. Louis Division’s warning focused on “the dangers of drug-laced treats this Halloween.” In particular, candy that’s been laced with meth and weed.
The warning played up the fear of “marijuana-laced candies sold in packages designed to look like traditional candies; including Munchy Ways, 3 Rastateers, Twixed, Keef Kat and Rasta Reese’s.” Of course, the DEA failed to mention that these are commercially sold edibles in states where weed is legal. Instead, they leave it there, hinting at evil plots to trick kids into getting high.
After warning parents to be on the lookout for meth or weed candies, the DEA provided a set of instructions. First, parents should screen their kids’ candy for “unusual wrapping or misspelled candy labels.”
As soon as they discover anything suspicious, parents are directed to “give it to your local police department.”
From there, the DEA told local cops to “document any information regarding drug-laced candy and preserve any evidence to send to the DEA Laboratory or testing.”
Valid Warning or Reefer Madness?
To be sure, there’s always a very real threat of kids getting dangerous candy. It’s definitely happened before. In fact, a kid in Ohio was already poisoned this year after eating candy that had meth in it.
With that in mind, there’s nothing wrong about warning against dangerous drugs like meth. And there’s nothing funny about poisoning kids with dangerous shit like meth or tricking someone to do anything without their consent.
But what does seem questionable is the warning’s sustained hype about weed. For starters, there’s a lot of effort in this warning to freak out parents and cops. Yet despite this, the DEA had to admit “there has been no specific threat” of kids getting tricked into eating edibles.
So there’s no actual threat about kids being harmed by weed candies. But the DEA goes ahead and warns about it anyway. Because, you know, they couldn’t pass up an opportunity to spread some Reefer Madness fear. Especially when Missouri has an important medical marijuana bill on next week’s ballot.
And what about the constant coupling of weed and meth? This part of the warning also seems dubious. Especially since one is a seriously dangerous drug and the other’s a plant that is physically impossible to overdose on.
When the federal government formally looked into the issue of overdosing on weed, here’s what their researchers found. “A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.”
Worst case scenario, you end up super duper high and paranoid for a few hours. That’s a slightly different outcome than overdosing on meth.
But for the DEA, it’s all the same. It’s all fueled at keeping an inherently racist, harmful, and ineffective war on drugs going as long as possible.
