Giving Free Drugs To Children For Halloween Is Not A Great Business Decision

A helpful PSA.

Over the last few weeks, Republicans have been freaking out over "rainbow fentanyl" and a theory that people are going to be giving it out as Halloween candy. Yesterday, Fox even aired a PSA featuring a group of Republican senators warning parents that Mexican drug cartels are targeting their children. Oh no!

“Fox aired a PSA from Republican senators warning about rainbow fentanyl ahead of Halloween, the video claims that even handling them can kill a person.”

— nikki mccann ramírez (@nikki mccann ramírez) 1665161378 

This seems like an incredibly poor business decision on the part of the powerful Mexican drug cartels.

Let us take a moment and think about what it is that is supposed to be happening here, ok? The assumption is that the "powerful Mexican drug cartels" are designing fentanyl pills to look like candy, for the purposes of getting children hooked. There are also, apparently, people who plan to buy a bunch of these pills and then hand them out at Halloween to trick-or-treaters, again, for the purpose of getting them hooked on fentanyl.

 There are a number of flaws in this plan. 

First of all, children would be terrible drug customers. They have no money! People are not going around starting drug cartels out of the goodness of their hearts, they are in it to make money. As such, the very last group of people they would want to target are children, who are largely unemployed and are probably only raking in about $10 a week in allowance money anyway. The children also do not have much access to independent transportation. What are they going to do? Hop in their Barbie Hot Wheels and drive down to the local drug dealer in order to pick up their weekly supply of opioids?

Second, how are the trick-or-treaters even supposed to know it's Fentanyl that they were given instead of Smarties? I don't know what Fentanyl feels like, so I can't imagine a third grader would be like "Oh wow, this Fentanyl is great! I'm gonna have to go back to that house and get some more!" The only houses I ever remembered were the ones that belonged to dentists, but maybe these kids are all geniuses.

Unless this is just supposed to be some plot to kill the children — like the razor-blade-filled apples thatwere so commondid not exist when I was a kid — but to what end? Again, drug cartels are trying to make money. Where is the money in mass murdering a bunch of kids on Halloween with rainbow colored Fentanyl?

Which brings me to my third point — this is also costly for whoever is doing it. Sure, Fentanyl costs less than heroin, coke or molly, which is why it is frequently used to cut those drugs, but it costs more than a fun-size Snickers. The average street price of one dose of Fentanyl costs about $2, for which one can get two full-size Snickers. I also have to imagine it would also arouse suspicion if someone were to give a kid just one individual unwrapped Smartie, which would no doubt get lost in the bottom of their bag or pumpkin or pillowcase anyway.

They'd also probably have to do an AirBNB type-situation, because probably there are not a lot of Fentanyl dealers in suburban neighborhoods, which would make it even more expensive. The cost-benefit analysis here is not exactly working out in favor of the drug cartels.

Clearly, this theory has brought to us by the same kind of people who came up with our school D.A.R.E programs and 1990s Drug PSAs in which school bullies accost children in hallways all like "Take these three pre-rolled joints OR ELSE!" and very special episodes where drug dealers justwalk right up to you on a playground and offer you some free drugs. Or someone who thought  Go Ask Alice  was real.

For some reason, conservative America has decided that the only way they can address any issue is by assuming the actual worst, most absurd scenarios they can come up with are what's actually going on. People are aborting babies as they come down the birth canal! There is a mass conspiracy to force their children to become trans! They stole the election from Donald Trump and Italy helped! Satanists are brainwashing children with Bette Midler movies! All art we don't understand is actually about how everyone is a cannibal!

It's some real Allegory of the Cav  e nonsense. Or the blind men and the elephant. Or the Weekly World News .

Fentanyl is a serious problem, as is the opioid epidemic in general, which is why we need people to be taking it seriously instead of making up easily debunked moral panics that obviously make no sense the moment you think about them for more than five seconds. Narcan vending machines are helpful, this shit is not.

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