Despite the Drug Enforcement Administration’s warning regarding “rainbow fentanyl,” experts on drugs and crime believe it’s doubtful the addictive substance disguised as vibrantly coloured candy ended up in children’s Halloween trick-or-treat bags.
Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, examined media accounts of tainted treats dating back to 1958 for an opinion post for CNN. In a statement that appeared on CNN, Best stated, “My major finding is simple: I can’t find any evidence that any youngster has ever been killed or gravely harmed by a tainted treat picked up in the process of trick-or-treating.”
Politicians who prey on parents’ fears have fueled concerns about rainbow fentanyl, Best wrote. He claimed that because fentanyl is expensive, neither drug users nor dealers would give it out if they could sell it or consume it.
In passing the drug off as sweets, Best writes, “it is not unreasonable to speculate just what a fentanyl dealer’s primary purpose would be.” The idea that a school-age child would progress from a paying addict to an accidental fentanyl user is absurd.
Better said tales of tainted foods, such razor blades in apples, have existed for decades and are best classified as modern myths or urban legends.
It would be a “colossally dumb business move,” according to David Herzberg, a history professor at the University of Buffalo who specialises in the history of drug misuse in America, for drug traffickers to administer fentanyl to young people.
Herzberg claims that giving out your products to a bunch of dying youngsters causes the government to pursue you in ways that have never been seen before, which is to your competitors’ advantage. “Everything about this is ludicrous,”
The DEA issued a warning about “rainbow fentanyl” in September without mentioning Halloween.
Drug traffickers intentionally use rainbow fentanyl—fentanyl tablets and powder that come in a range of vibrant colours, forms, and sizes—to encourage addiction in children and young people, according to DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in a news release.
The Mexican drug cartels, who are in charge of the vast majority of the fentanyl being trafficked in the United States, are being beaten back by the DEA’s men and women, who are working tirelessly to stop the trafficking of rainbow fentanyl.
