Please Stop Fearing Halloween Candy; More Cuts by The Desert Sun’s Owner–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Oct. 13, 2022

Indy Digest: Oct. 13, 2022

Hello, everybody! Raise your hand if you think tainted/poisoned candy, or drugs disguised as candy, is given to kids at Halloween, even rarely.

If you answered yes, there’s a good chance you watch local TV news … and you’re incorrect.

Yesterday, The Conversation published an article headlined “Rainbow fentanyl – the newest Halloween scare.” Written by Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, the piece says:

Every year around the middle of October, reporters start contacting me wanting to talk about rumors of contaminated Halloween treats.

That’s because I track media coverage of reported incidents of trick-or-treaters receiving razor blades in apples or pins and poison in candy bars. My data goes back to 1958, and my principal finding is simple: I can’t find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating.

This often surprises people who assume that Halloween sadism is both very real and very common.

Stories about contaminated treats are best understood as contemporary legends. They’re tales we’ve all heard, that we’ve been assured are true. They warn that we live in a dangerous world filled with villainous strangers who could harm us if we aren’t careful.

This year, reporters began reaching out earlier than usual, in late September, and they wanted to talk about a new alleged threat: “rainbow fentanyl.”

To clarify: Yes, rainbow fentanyl is a thing. Yes, it looks like candy, and that makes it very dangerous to kids, who may assume it’s candy if they ever come across it. Those facts make this piece by NBC Palm Springs, about local school districts expressing concern about rainbow fentanyl, decidedly worthwhile. That is, except for the Halloween reference.

Best goes on to write:

Often there is a kernel of truth to these fears. Certainly fentanyl is a dangerous drug. But American history can be read as a long line of fears about witches, immigrants, drugs, conspirators and so on. These fears emerge as reflections of current social changes. Yes, things are always changing, and this can always frighten some people. But it is also true that, in retrospect, these fears are usually exaggerated.

What seems new about describing rainbow fentanyl as a Halloween danger is the willingness of important political figures and news media outlets to spread the warnings. Most past claims about Halloween sadism lack such prominent spokespeople.

But in a time when many news outlets seem intent on maintaining their audiences by frightening them, and increased political polarization seems to stall efforts to devise workable social policies, calls for protecting our children from the threats of boogeyman drug dealers return us to the spirit of Halloween: offering up fresh ways to keep people scared.

John Oliver recently did a “deep dive” about TV news crime coverage (including stories about rainbow fentanyl) on Last Week Tonight. It’s very much worth your time if you can spare 27 minutes.

If you can’t spare 27 minutes, here’s a key quote:

… While the idea of (rainbow fentanyl) being made to target kids sounds scary, experts on narcotics have pointed out: those pills are almost certainly colored just to differentiate products, and it has nothing to do with marketing to kids at all, period, whatsoever. Which does makes sense, because kids—and this is true—are not an ideal customer base for expensive street drugs. Because even if dealers were targeting trick-or-treaters with a “first one’s on the house” strategy, where do you expect little Zeke to come up with the cash for the next one? Sure, he’s got his weekly allowance, but he smacked his brother yesterday, so that’s that dollar gone. And the rest of his net worth is tied up in Lego store gift cards. He’s useless to dealers. Maybe check back in ten years when he gets prescribed oxy after a lacrosse injury.

As always, make sure your news sources are trustworthy. And keep in mind that TV stations often determine success by ratings, not journalistic quality.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Gannett—the company that owns The Desert Sun—announced another round of deep, difficult cuts yesterday. Editor & Publisher reports: “Gannett mandated five days unpaid leave for employees, offered severance for voluntary resignations and suspended 401(k) matching for the employees remaining at the country’s largest newspaper publisher two months after it laid off 3% of its workforce. CEO Mike Reed sent an email to staff Wednesday announcing the changes. “‘Team – These are truly challenging times,’ the email began. ‘The company continues to face headwinds and uncertainty from the deteriorating macroeconomic environment, which has led the executive team to take further immediate action.’ The company laid off about 400 employees beginning Aug. 12 and told staff they would not fill 400 open positions. The announcement came after Gannett said it lost $54 million on revenues of $749 million in its second-quarter report.”

• Reed is correct: These are tough times. However, Gannett is hamstrung by debt, regardless of the “times.” Poynter reports: “The company also is saddled with more than $1 billion in debt from its merger with GateHouse in 2019. Earlier this month, Gannett reported it had paid down $55 million of that debt since June 30. It also will be selling $65 million to $75 million in real estate and other assets.” In other words, the company is selling off anything it can find, and making all sorts of cuts, to pay debt—and not investing in its product. To say Gannett’s future looks bleak is an understatement. We have an email in to the The Desert Sun’s newsroom union rep asking for a chat; we’ll keep you posted on the response we get.

• Kids as young as 5 can now receive the updated COVID-19 booster shots. CNN says: “The moves mean children and teens can get the boosters from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech as long as they’re at least two months past their primary vaccine series or last booster dose. Like the boosters that became available for people 12 and older in September, these bivalent boosters target the original coronavirus strain as well as the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants.”

• You may recall that a crippling railroad strike was narrowly averted several weeks ago due to a last-minute deal. Well … that deal is being rejected by employees, meaning a crippling strike remains very possible—just in time for the holidays! The Washington Post says: “Members of the third-largest rail union rejected the proposed five-year contract 56 percent to 43 percent, officials said. Both sides have agreed to resume negotiations until at least Nov. 19, and railroads are expected to continue operating normally in the meantime. President Biden was personally involved in the talks … He hailed it as a win for both carriers and workers. But many union members were skeptical from the start, with some telling The Washington Post that the details were opaque. The plan included a 24 percent pay increase by 2024—bringing the average wage to $110,000 a year—and $1,000 annual bonuses for five years. It also ensured health-care co-pays and deductibles would not increase. But it seemed to include only one paid sick day, even after union leaders had pushed for 15.”

• Because of inflation and other economic pressures, everything costs more. As a result, any income that includes a cost of living adjustment—like Social Security—is going up, too. The New York Times reports: “About 70 million Americans collecting Social Security will receive an 8.7 percent bump in their benefits next year, the largest raise since 1981, the Social Security Administration said on Thursday. That will provide some measure of relief to retirees struggling with soaring prices on everyday necessities, from groceries to housing. Prices have remained stubbornly high over the past year, even as federal policymakers have taken aggressive measures to rein them in. Social Security is designed to keep pace with inflation through its cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, which is calculated annually. Starting in January, the increase will lift the typical monthly retiree benefit by $140 to $1,827. That follows a 5.9 percent increase for 2022, a four-decade high at the time.“

• Not only are women’s doctors having to deal with the awful ramifications of the overturn of Roe v. Wade; many of their employers are telling them they can’t speak out about those awful ramifications. CNN starts out with two anecdotes about doctors being muzzled, and then explains: “These two doctors, and six others interviewed by CNN, say their employers—major public and private medical centers in five states—have asked them to not speak publicly about abortion, or have instructed them that if they do speak publicly about abortion, they can do so only as private citizens and cannot mention where they work. Even when they are permitted to speak about abortion as private citizens, these doctors say, their employers have made it clear that they would prefer the doctors not talk at all, and so they have hesitated to speak up.”

• And finally … in this space, we’ve previously mentioned an observed correlation between impending COVID-19 spikes, and negative Yankee Candle reviews: When people go to Amazon to complain that their candles don’t smell, that means COVID cases are surging. Well, could there actually be scientific merit to this? The Philadelphia Enquirer says: “One study by Nick Beauchamp—West Philly native and an associate professor of political science and network science at Northeastern University in Boston—published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence earlier this year suggested that COVID-19 waves could predict poor scented candle reviews, with the caveat that there’s no evidence suggesting the reviews are a ‘leading indicator’ of rising rates. ‘No smell reviews do indeed reflect changes in U.S. COVID cases even when controlling for the seasonality of those reviews,’ Beauchamp’s paper summary says. ‘These results suggest that inadvertent digital traces may be an important tool for tracking epidemics.’ With the omicron variant, Beauchamp and Caballero say, bad Amazon reviews may also help predict looming case surges, though updated data indicate any link may be weakening. It’s also difficult to definitively tie Amazon reviews with case increases—and cases don’t increase uniformly nationwide.”

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