We’re closing in on Halloween, the high, holy day in swingerdom when ghosts and monsters and swingers can walk around without disguises amongst the normal people without being noticed. Pretty much every year I see some sort of news report, article, or social media rumor warning parents of the dangers of drugs and to watch out for unscrupulous strangers putting illicit “candies” in kids trick or treat bags. LSD was the culprit decades ago, but these days ecstasy is usually the target of these baseless rumors. Dealers are not handing out MDMA at Halloween to get kids hooked on drugs.
This is a ridiculous notion. It doesn’t even make logical sense! It seems founded on the fact that many ecstasy pills are pressed into fun shapes and bright colors with cool logos. The ones that really fuel the fire are the Lego block press. This is not to appeal to kids, as some websites would have you believe. The real reason for this is two fold:
- To establish a brand. I used this example before, but if a vendor offers you a Tesla, that should mean something. It should be able to expect ~230mg of MDMA, an orange pill with a Tesla logo, and it should glow under a black light. That’s the Tesla brand. If it doesn’t match those things, it shouldn’t be sold as a Tesla. This is where legalization and regulation would help substance use.
- Ecstasy pills are supposed to appeal to ravers!
Let Me Break It Down
And now, all the reasons why dealers are not handing out MDMA at Halloween, in a logical order no less. For fun, let’s follow the adventures of Molly (see what I’m doing there?), a precocious 10-year-old who dressed up as Batman for Halloween, ‘cause she’s a badass and doesn’t give a shit about gender stereotypes!
During Molly’s night of trick-or-treating with her friends and annoying younger brother (he was also going to dress as Batman, which is a dick move, younger brother, ‘cause you knew that was Molly’s choice for months!), the group of five kids, all ranging from seven to 11 years old, were given a single ecstasy pill in the shape of a Lego.
Let’s examine all the reasons this will not benefit the douchebag dropping drugs into pumpkin head buckets.
Ecstasy Isn’t Addictive
Not physically, anyway. Some people can become hooked on feeling good, on that high of being open and unrepressed. Even if little Molly took the ecstasy, she wouldn’t be suddenly craving it. She wouldn’t be tearing through her brother’s candy to find another hit. Or trying to trade away all of her Reeses’s cups for just one more…whatever it was that made her feel so good in the first place.
And that brings us to problem number two.
Kids Won’t Know What Got Them High
The happy trick-or-treater is digging into her bag of candy and pops a Lego-block looking thing into her mouth (which tastes fucking awful when she crunches into it; it nearly breaks her teeth, too, making it the worst damn candy in the bag) along with some candy corns (second worst), a caramel apple (she just eats the caramel, not the apple, so it’s not too bad), and a KitKat to clense her palate. Forty-five minutes later, she is feeling better than she ever has in all her life! Colors are brighter! The cat feels softer! She suddenly gets EDM, a music form that has escaped her understanding throughout her 10 years of existence on this planet!
She has no clue that what she’s experiencing was a result of the horrible Lego block that she hated. As far as she knows, she’s just experienced the most wonderful sugar rush of her life. She has no ability to grasp that she took a drug. That if she could find the source, she could feel this way again.
And even if she did figure out that it was the Lego block, maybe by consulting with all her friends (smart kids using scientific reasoning to solve the problem FTW!), we come now to problem three.
Kids Don’t Know Where the Candy Came From
How many doors do kids knock on while trick-or-treating? There are ten houses on my block alone. Maybe 50? 100? More if it’s an apartment building, right? It’s been a long time since I went trick-or-treating, so maybe I’m off base on this one, but I couldn’t tell you which house gave out which candy at the end of the night. I do remember giving other kids the heads-up as to which house was doling out apples. But by the next day, I probably couldn’t point it out.
If one Lego block was part of a 50-house haul, is Molly going to know which house it came from?
Kids Don’t Have Money
Let’s say, for this example, not only does brilliant little Molly really enjoy the MDMA high, she also figures out which candy got her high and which house it came from. On November 4th, she sneaks away from her parents and visit that house to ask for more Lego blocks. The nice man who opens the doors says “Oh, yes, I have more of those, but they cost $15 each!”
That’s not a sustainable habit for a 10 year old. Crestfallen, Molly wanders back home. Maybe someday she’ll have a fun experience like that again. By the time she’s got a job with a steady income, that dude’s going to be in jail for giving out drugs at Halloween. That’s no way to keep a low profile.
Let’s Do Some Math
At an opportunity cost of $15 a pill, the dealer “spent” $75 giving ecstasy to Molly and her four friends. For ease of math, let’s assume he hands out 100 pills across a single night. I have no clue how many trick-or-treaters a typical house gets, but 100 doesn’t seem too out there. Friends told me they got 70 last year (they are the type to count), and that was disappointingly low. So, 100 pills at $15 a pill, that’s $1,500 in product given away for free.
Of those 100 kids, most never get to the point of tracing that feel-good experience back to the dealer. I’ll be kind and say five do. Even if all five buy one pill a month, it would take 20 months before the dealer saw a profit!
And dealing to children like that would be a sure-fire way of getting caught.
That’s Why Dealers Are Not Handing Out MDMA at Halloween
But you don’t have to take my word on it: Snopes already busted this one. It’s like that story about poisoned candy being handed out. There are no confirmed causes of poisoned candy being distributed randomly at Halloween. Though some asshat killed his son on purpose with a poisoned Pixie Stick.
Changing the Perception
Rumors like these make MDMA seem like a scary, dangerous drugs:
- It looks like candy to appeal to kids! — False!
- Dealers are trying to get kids addicted! — False!
- My kids are going to overdose and die! — Mostly false! There is the potential for any drug to be dangerous.
Lies like these keep the public in the dark about the true potential of substances like MDMA. Which, when used properly, can create a safe, fun, and healing experience. The true medicinal, therapeutic value of substance like marijuna, MDMA, and psychedelics will be ignored so long as there is a public panic about the dangers inherent in these substances, and Halloween rumors like this one keep that panic alive.
Let’s spread harm reduction practices not false rumors.