No, We’re Not Putting Weed In Your Kid’s Halloween Candy

Cannabis products have come a long way. These days, you can find marijuana edibles in numerous forms—including candy. Perhaps this is when the hype around the warnings of THC-infused candy started to emerge, or maybe it was bound to happen with recreational marijuana making its appearance in more and more states.

Either way, rumored stories of children falling victim to weed-laced candy have made their rounds year after year. But just because cannabis comes in candy form doesn’t mean there should be a significant concern about finding weed-infused candy in your kid’s Halloween trick-or-treat bag.

In fact, there are a number of reasons why this isn’t as likely as you might think—as well as little evidence to support these rumors.

Why It’s Extremely Unlikely You’ll Find Weed in Your Kids Halloween Candy

Sure, it’s still important to have common sense and check your kids’ candy bags before letting them loose on that sugar rush. Being mindful of things like unwrapped candy or something that doesn’t look quite right in their trick-or-treat bag is always important.

However, it’s both illegal and dangerous to give marijuana to minors, and that’s common sense even for those who aren’t super law-savvy.

If that isn’t enough to put your mind at ease, maybe this will—marijuana isn’t cheap. These rumors are likely coming from people who don’t understand just how expensive marijuana actually is and why people wouldn’t just be giving it away for kicks.

In fact, there’s really nothing to be gained by handing out marijuana-infused candy to children, and it’s actually going to be quite expensive to do so.

The average cost per individual piece of cannabis candy is going to be at least several dollars, and the prices can climb to over $10 or more per piece for fancier kinds with higher THC levels. The cost of distributing all this cannabis candy at the end of Halloween night? Likely hundreds and hundreds of dollars at a minimum.  

Grown, marijuana-loving adults are not interested in handing out their weed stash to random people they don’t know instead of consuming it themselves. So, handing it out to unsuspecting children is the last thing they would want to do.

It’s a heck of a lot cheaper, and way more legal, to hand out full-sized candy bars than weed candy on Halloween night.

The packaging on edibles is also a different material than regular candy. It’s thicker and more difficult to open, for safety reasons. Even the candy bar edibles that come in what look like “real” candy bar wrappers are a dead giveaway.

Names like Hashey’s, Munchy Way, 3 Rastateers, Twixed, Keef Kat, and Rasta Reese’s are a few of what you’ll find on these wrappers. If, by some chance, one of these managed to make its way into a trick-or-treat bag, the cannabis play-on-words means these “candy bars” are going to be a red flag.

Of course, not all edibles come from a dispensary—some people do make their own edibles at home from flower. However, those candies would not have a wrapper and appear to be an obviously homemade version using parchment paper or a plastic baggie.

If a cannabis candy were to somehow make it into a trick-or-treat bag, it would either be in a hard-to-open original label, which by law must clearly state the THC levels, or unwrapped—either one should be pretty obvious. They would also still have that very distinctive weed smell that would be hard to miss.

However, the warnings about the possibility of drug-laced candy being distributed to children are not a brand-new thing. In fact, it dates back to the mid-1900’s.

The History of the Tainted-Candy Hype

For parents who still aren’t convinced, perhaps look at the statistics and the history of drug-infused candy ending up in children’s hands.

When it comes to Halloween-related injuries or deaths, the real culprit lies with kids getting hit by cars, having costume-related tripping accidents, or other darkness-related injuries.

As for weed-laced candy? Well, there is an extreme lack of evidence to support cannabis candy ending up in kids’ bags. Not only is it extremely rare, but it’s also very close to being completely undocumented. Instead, it’s become a media hype that has had parents terrified over nothing for generations.

Back in 1959, a dentist in California was handing out laxative pills coated in candy—this caused over 30 children to become ill. According to the police, and a report published in The New York Times, over 400 of these pills were put in kids’ trick-or-treat bags.

This might just have been where the legend of kids getting drugs in their candy bags started. Although, laxative pills are hardly the hard-core-drug scares that are rumored today.

Fear from the media and the newspapers later hit its peak in the 1970’s. Razor blades in apples and packets of sleeping pills were some of the concerns that made their rounds in the era.

While these concerns did die down, they re-emerged again around 1982. This time, rumors like cyanide-laced Tylenol were rampant, even causing a steep decline in candy sales at grocery stores and the banning of trick-or-treating in some communities that year.

But Joel Best, who is a sociology professor at the University of Delaware, has studied this very topic for over 41 years. His findings? Virtually no evidence of this happening in real life, despite the warnings and the media hype.

Over the years, the occasional report of children being harmed by drug-tainted candies has indeed emerged. However, when Joel Best investigated the claims further, the claim would later be found to be a hoax nearly ever time. In some cases, the person would rescind their story days later.

“I can’t find any evidence of any child being killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,” Best has said.

For example, in the 1970’s, a child died because of ingesting heroin. The original story appears as contamination of trick-or-treat candy. But later, the truth emerged that the child had found the heroin in a relative’s home.

As for that cyanide-laced candy story? The candy actually came from the child’s father, who was later convicted of murder.

And when it comes to marijuana-related candy, Best has not yet seen any confirmed reports of children becoming sick from one being slipped into a trick-or-treat bag.

Final Takeaways

While the fear of marijuana-laced candy making its way into children’s Halloween bags has been around for decades, the reality is much different.

The combination of cost, legality, and the distinct characteristics of cannabis products make it highly unlikely for anyone to intentionally give weed-infused treats to kids. Despite sensational media reports and persistent rumors, there is little evidence to support the idea that children are at risk of consuming THC-laced candy while trick-or-treating.

Instead, the focus should remain on practical safety measures, like ensuring children cross streets safely and avoid unwrapped or suspicious candy. Ultimately, the fear surrounding cannabis in Halloween candy is more a product of media hype than a genuine threat.