This Year, The Halloween Candy Moral Panic Seems To Be Centering Around 'Rainbow Fentanyl'

Most Americans who were children in the past 50 years can tell tales of teachers and parents warning them to be careful of the candy they receive on Halloween night, as there may be a nefarious actor out there secretly giving them weapons or drugs. In the past, there have been rumors of razor blades in candy apples and heroin-laced chocolate bars. This year, the moral panic crowd has seemed to coalesce around "rainbow fentanyl."

Over the weekend, Arizona border patrol officials intercepted and seized tens of thousands of fentanyl pills, 30,000 of which were "rainbow-colored," according to a report from Fox News.

This morning, GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took that story and added a new wrinkle, stating on Fox News, "Every mom in the country is worried, 'what if this gets into my kid's Halloween basket?' The rainbow fentanyl." The conversation came as part of a segment on Fox News attempting to paint Democrats as scary for supposedly wanting open borders.

"Every mom in the country is worried, what if this gets into my kid's Halloween basket? The rainbow fentanyl." -- Ronna McDaniel pic.twitter.com/fzIioFrXQY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2022

Fentanyl has itself been the subject of intense moral panic in recent years. The powerful opiate can be fatal when taken in significant doses, but misinformation about the drug has run rampant online, causing possible psychosomatic seizures.

Last year, a cop was said to have had a seizure after handling fentanyl. In July, a woman collapsed after touching a dollar bill she thought was laced with fentanyl. In both instances, commenters and medical professionals doubted the stories, as the medical experts insisted one cannot overdose on fentanyl from merely touching the drug.

While it would indeed be a malicious and criminal act to distribute fentanyl to children, many found it highly unlikely a nefarious actor somewhere in America is plotting to murder children by giving them fentanyl on Halloween. Some commenters noted that it would be a highly inefficient mass-murder plot considering the steep street price of the drug.

the hilarious thing about this clip is it shows bill clinton talking about how the gop always tries to scare voters before an election and then mcdaniel and perino scoffing at that RIGHT BEFORE mcdaniel pivots to RAINBOW FENTANYL IN HALLOWEEN BASKETS IN JOE BIDEN’S AMERICA https://t.co/oTZFIIXfDj

— andy™ (@andylevy) September 20, 2022

If you believe drug pushers would hand out powerful narcotics to large numbers of random children from the front doors of their home addresses, I would love to talk with you about some shares in a silver mine.

— Daniel Summers, MD (@WFKARS) September 20, 2022

"They're calling it rainbow fentanyl on the streets, these psychos put it in kid's Halloween baskets and suddenly little Mikey's tripping balls behind his Spider-Man mask, sick stuff." https://t.co/vV8fZuWpXR pic.twitter.com/jWBWu9dVy1

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) September 20, 2022

Though, of course, it is good practice to make sure the candy a child receives on Halloween is safe, it has time and again been shown that the moral panic over supposedly poisoned Halloween candy has been blown significantly out of proportion.

In 2019, CNN dove into the history of the "poisoned-candy panic" and found that most if not all stories of children being supposedly harmed by Halloween candy were in fact not due to the candy they'd received but through the negligence or malice of their parents.