A cautionary tale has developed a new twist this year, as an alarming opioid has become the latest drug feared to be lurking inside trick-or-treat hauls for Halloween.
It’s been an annual tradition for people to raise concerns of drugs like marijuana edibles or dangerous objects such as needles to be inside candy for the holiday. But this time around has been different, at least to Joel Best, a sociology and criminal justice professor at the University of Delaware who has spent decades studying the scare of tainted Halloween treats.
“This year has been especially unusual because you have prominent people pointing to a particular danger, which, of course, is the danger of rainbow fentanyl,” Best told U.S. TODAY. “This has been very strange.”
Best, who spends every year speaking with the media about Halloween drug hoaxes, said he normally gets interview requests about two weeks before the holiday, but this year he got…