Tag: hit&run

California law enforcement have closed a number of cold cases in recent years using what a front-page story in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times describes as a “controversial” DNA testing technique that allows investigators to identify suspects based on DNA that matches their immediate male relatives. One of the cases solved using this technique includes that of the notorious “Grim Sleeper,” the nickname for serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr., who may have killed 25 women over the span of two decades.

According to the Times report, even skeptics who were wary of possible privacy violations and racially disparate outcomes have begun to rethink their opposition in light of the impressive track record of this relatively new method:

Nabbing Franklin changed things for now-UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin, who once condemned using DNA to find suspects by searching for relatives. Mnookin argued that the method invades privacy rights and is racially discriminatory because African Americans and Latinos are disproportionately represented in DNA databases.

Although she still worries about the racial disparity, she said her view shifted after seeing the effect on big cases, such as Franklin’s, and how infrequently the technology is used.

“If it’s helping us solve big cases,” Mnookin said, “it seems like a worthwhile trade-off.”

As it happens, this particular type of DNA testing is a key element of a case Reason TV covered in a three-part video series. The case concerns an Orange County man named Kenneth Clair, whom a jury sentenced to death in 1987 for the murder and assault of a 25-year-old woman named Linda Faye Rodgers.

Decades later, a private eye working for Clair uncovered the fact that the Orange County District Attorney’s office had tested male DNA found on the victim’s genitals. The DNA did not match Clair and, furthermore, it did match someone else in a criminal database. Upon learning this information, Clair’s team asked for the county to release the name of the match, but the county refused, citing privacy concerns and pointing out that the matching individual would have been too young to have committed the crime. But the fact that the database hit didn’t lead to a plausible suspect doesn’t rule out the possibility that an older male relative, such as a father or uncle, might be the perpetrator. By refusing to release the name of the match, the county is foreclosing possible alternative investigatory avenues. Indeed, this is precisely the situation that led police to capture the Grim Sleeper, according to the Times:

After getting a partial DNA hit to his son in 2010, authorities charged Franklin with killing nine women and a teenage girl. He was convicted earlier this year and sentenced to death.

The DA’s office refuses to speak on the record about why they withheld the very fact that they ran the DNA test or why they continue to hold back the name of the DNA match in the Clair case, but they have this to say in a press release on the matter:

The fact that male DNA [the Y-STR haplotype] was detected in a swab of the victim’s vagina is no indication she was raped at the time of her murder, or even that she had intercourse at the time of the murder. The swabs tested negative for semen at the time of trial. (Trial RT 1591.) Thus, any male DNA [the Y-STR haplotype] in the victim’s vagina was either deposited well before her murder, or was the result of contamination of the sample. If in fact the victim had had sexual contact with some male relative of the individual whose Y DNA apparently matches the Y DNA found in the vaginal swab, discovery of that male relative would not in any way diminish the evidence against Clair in this case. It would have no tendency to prove that someone other than Clair killed Linda Rodgers. [bolding added]

It’s true enough that if the male DNA was simply a result of contamination by a member of the forensics team, it would have no bearing on Clair’s innocence or guilt. But by refusing to release this crucial piece of information, the DA is asking Clair’s team—and the public—to simply trust the integrity of their investigation in a case that’s riddled with problems.

California governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill that would charge prosecutors who withhold evidence with felonies, a much-needed check on prosecutorial power that might have made a big difference in the Clair clase.

“My case has never been fully investigated,” Clair told Reason TV. “All I’m asking for is a new trial.”

Watch the full interview with Clair below.

Download Video as MP4

Download Video as MP4

Download Video as MP4

I’m afraid I botched a prediction pretty badly back in 2011. I was writing about the news that Archie Comics was dumping the Comics Code, a set of rules the industry had adopted in the ’50s to stave off the threat of government censorship, and in the process I said this:

Don’t worry, the kids of Riverdale aren’t about to endure a darker, edgier reboot. You just don’t need the Comics Code Authority’s seal of approval to know what you’re getting when you buy an Archie comic book.

Since then, the folks at Archie HQ have branched out in a bunch of different directions, and some of those branches definitely aspire to dark-and-edgy status. There’s a whole “Archie Horror” line, featuring a gory zombie comic called Afterlife with Archie and a second series called Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The latter is not, I gather, sitcom material:

There is also a non-horror series in which Archie’s gay pal Kevin becomes a senator and Archie dies stopping his assassination. Today I learned about a bizarre new comic in which Archie and his friends travel back in time to meet the Ramones. And the entertainment press has started buzzing about Riverdale, an upcoming Archie TV show whose tone is being compared to film noir and Twin Peaks. That’s a television series, not a comic, but it’s gonna spawn a comic-book version too.

If you prefer the wholesome Archie that your grandparents grew up with, don’t fret: Those comics are still coming out too. (Needless to say, these stories all take place in different timelines. The Archieverse is a multiverse.) So the gritty stuff isn’t squeezing out the old Archie; it’s an addition rather than a replacement. The death of the Comics Code has given us more choice and plenitude, which as far as I’m concerned is a good thing. I’m just sorry I didn’t have the foresight to see just where the post–Comics Code Archie would be heading.

Bonus links: Dark Archie may be a new development, but Weird Archie certainly isn’t. Check out Al Hartley’s right-wing, evangelical Archie comics from the ’70s, which among other wonderfully strange moments featured Betty denouncing Darwinism in the schools:

The Christian Archie stories were produced by a separate company, called Spire—and Spire, interestingly, eschewed the Comics Code seal of approval, just like the Archie Horror folks do today. The Christian Archie comics were therefore able to allude explicitly to sex, drugs, and other subjects barred from the mainstream Archie line. And they did!

Another flavor of Weird Archie manifested itself in the 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats, which is part conspiracy movie and part self-aware anti-corporate satire. And if unsanctioned parodies count, there’s the underground cartoonists Jay Kinney and Paul Mavrides’ classic “Kultur Documents,” in which Archie and Jughead are reimagined as Anarchie and Ludehead, a couple of punk rockers rebelling against the hippies. Little did we know that one day the characters who inspired them would be hanging out with the Ramones.

Some Americans (typically on the left) habitually threaten to move to Canada if the presidential election doesn’t go their way. Maybe libertarians should look overseas to Iceland.

The small island nation of Iceland (population: 320,000) got a significant amount of attention during the banking crisis by not bailing out its financial institutions. It seemed to have worked out well enough for them.

Iceland has also seen the rise of the Pirate Party as a political force. The Pirate Party is only a decade old, a small political movement focused on intellectual property reform, freedom of information, government transparency, opposition to censorship, and direct democracy. The party supports net neutrality as well, but otherwise, the average American libertarian would likely feel more at home with the Pirates than any other non-libertarian party. Reason has previously noted Pirate Party parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir trying to help Edward Snowden get asylum in Iceland before he ended up pretty much trapped in Russia.

The Pirate Party had seen some modest success in Iceland, winning three seats in the country’s lawmaking body. But after the release of the Panama Papers earlier in the year, interest in the Pirate Party skyrocketed. Americans may have already forgotten about the scandal, part of which was heavily about how public officials in many countries were hiding their wealth outside their home countries and avoiding taxes.

Iceland’s prime minister got caught up in the scandal when the papers revealed that he owned half of a company connected to one of the bankrupt banks and sold his share to his wife in order to avoid transparency requirements that went into effect in 2010. There were protests in the tens of thousands (massive, when you consider the size of Iceland’s population), and he stepped down in April.

Interest in the Pirate Party boomed in Iceland, and their polling support approached nearly 40 percent in the spring. They’ve dropped a bit since then, but they could pick up between 18 to 20 new seats in Iceland’s parliament if these poll numbers hold up in their election Oct. 29. This would not give them control over parliament but would make them a dominant force.

It’s an important trend to pay attention to given the populist insurgencies we’ve been seeing in the elections both in the United States and in other Western countries. This appears to be just like all these other voter revolts (it’s being treated as such in some reporting), but note how different the goals are. There’s a push for limiting the power of government and therefore limiting the corruptibility of government that is different from what we’re seeing here from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters. As Nick Gillespie has previously written, there tends to be a paradox that when people don’t trust the government, the end result is often more regulation, bureaucracy, and control, not less.

The Pirate Party and their potential success could be an indicator of a counterpush, just as increased in interest in the Libertarian Party’s candidate this year gives voice to those who are frustrated with a government who is interested only in perpetuating an agenda that will make it grow more and more powerful over the lives of citizens.

Read more analysis of the rise of Iceland’s Pirate Party here. Read a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (in English) with Iceland Pirate Party representatives here.

Sean Hannity is having a tough time dealing with the ups and downs of Election 2016. Here’s an actual god’s-honest-tweet the Fox News host posted recently, declaring in all-caps outrage that “Journalism is DEAD IN AMERICA!”

Journalism is DEAD IN AMERICA! http://pic.twitter.com/50ZBOTvfHy

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 26, 2016

Let’s stipulate a few caveats before engaging Hannity’s, um, thesis. Yes, there is media bias in American journalism, with most reporters who cover politics leaning toward views that are decidedly more friendly to figures such as Hillary Clinton and parties such as the Democratic party. There are all sorts of blind spots, especially in so-called legacy media, which at this point not only includes outfits such as The New York Times but also greying institutions such as…Fox News tbh. To the extent that the media isn’t liberal, it’s conservative or, even worse, simply reactionary to everything new and different. I could go on, but I think most of us—especially when us is a dog whistle for libertarians, that happy breed that feels like we never quite get the respect, attention, and column inches we so richly deserve—can agree that media bias exists.

And yet… Has there ever been a better time for consumers and producers of news, journalism, commentary, and whatever else you want to talk about? I don’t think so, especially if you’re part of what used to be call the alt-media (back when something called the mainstream kind of existed).

I’ve been at Reason since 1993 and I know our trajectory has been upwards (I rush to note of course that correlation doesn’t imply causation!) my entire time here. A large part of that was due to the person who hired me, then-Editor Virginia Postrel, who had a strong vision for the print magazine in terms of in-depth, serious policy and think pieces and also got us going on the web back when most media outfits didn’t give a fuck about that sort of thing. During the 2000s, we seriously beefed up our online presence and the range of topics we covered and material we produced. Thanks to the vision of Drew Carey and Reason Foundation president David Nott, we launched Reason TV in 2007, taking advantage of ever-cheaper technology and distribution possibilities to create online videos. Under the auspices of Reason mag Editor in Chief Matt Welch and, since earlier this year, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason is approaching its 50th birthday (we were started as a mimeographed ‘zine in 1968 by the late, great Lanny Friedlander) with a vastly larger and more-influential audience (that’s a compliment to you, gentle readers!) than we ever imagined. And we’re still growing in size and offerings! More than 4 million visitors a month at this website! About 2.5 million viewers for our vids on YouTube and Facebook! And check out our refurbished podcasts! Subscribe here and here!

So screw you, Sean Hannity, when you say “Journalism is DEAD IN AMERICA!”

To be clear, Donald Trump’s presidential dreams may be dead. Part of Sean Hannity’s soul may be dead. A subset of Republican bigwigs, especially those who embrace the past and fear the future may be dead.

But journalism? Not so much.

Even or especially at Fox News. Consider this kinda-sorta epic smackdown between Newt Gingrich and Hannity’s intra-channel rival Megyn Kelly. What you are witnessing below is the end of the former Speaker, who helped usher in decades of Republican control of the House of Representatives, admitting that he’s got absolutely nothing left to talk about or think about that might be of interest to the dwindling number of his newsletter subscribers. He’s more stuck in the goddamn ’90s than Snapple, Oasis, and the cast of Full House.

By virtually all accounts, Donald Trump will lose on Election Day and he might even drag the Republican Senate down with him. As someone who finds both Trump and Hillary Clinton and the GOP and Democrats unacceptable choices due to their anti-freedom policies, I approach November 9 with decidedly mixed feelings: Why can’t both of them lose?

The good news? Even if Trump does somehow win (the sound that you’re hearing? That’s Sean Hannity talking about mistaken Brexit polls!), there will be plenty of work for the living, breathing, thriving journalists at Reason and elsewhere to do. For god’s sake, the only thing as bad as a Trump win would be a Clinton win—and vice versa.

Come the day after the election, Sean Hannity will probably spend a lot of time tossing midget footballs into the Long Island Sound and cursing the media but the rest of us journalists—well, at least those of us at Reason magazine, Reason.com, and Reason TV—know that Election Day is simply the renewal date of a full-employment act for folks who want to bring about “Free Minds and Free Markets.”

Bill Weld wants you to know that he really, really, really doesn’t like Donald Trump. The Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee, who started off his ticket’s media campaign by expressing an open preference for his “old friend” Hillary Clinton over the Republican nominee, and then spent the intervening months trying to walk back that sentiment and batting down persistent rumors that he was going to drop out or “exclusively” criticize Trump, took the unusual step yesterday of releasing a prepared statement “regarding the final weeks of this election.”

“I would not have stepped out of the swirl of the campaign to make this statement,” Weld said, “if I did not fear for our country, as I do.”

The former Massachusetts governor addressed himself specifically “to all those in the electorate who remain torn between two so-called major party candidates whom they cannot enthusiastically support,” particularly “those Republicans who feel that our President should exhibit commonly accepted standards of decency and discipline.” What does he say to those Republicans who can’t bring themselves to vote third party? Defeat Donald Trump. Excerpt:

After careful observation and reflection, I have come to believe that Donald Trump, if elected President of the United States, would not be able to stand up to this pressure and this criticism without becoming unhinged and unable to perform competently the duties of his office. […]

This is the worst of American politics. I fear for our cohesion as a nation, and for our place in the world, if this man who is unwilling to say he will abide by the result of our national election becomes our President.

This great nation has weathered policy differences throughout our history, and we will do so again. Not in my lifetime, though, has there been a candidate for President who actually makes me fear for the ultimate well-being of the country, a candidate who might in fact put at risk the solid foundation of America that allows us to endure even ill-advised policies and the normal ebb and flow of politics.

In the final days of this very close race, every citizen must be aware of the power and responsibility of each individual vote. This is not the time to cast a jocular or feel-good vote for a man whom you may have briefly found entertaining. Donald Trump should not, cannot, and must not be elected President of the United States.

Read the whole statement here.

In follow-up conversation with reporters, Weld “refused to say whether he was asking undecided voters and Republicans to back Clinton,” reported The Boston Globe. “Nor did he make a strong pitch for them to get behind him and his Libertarian presidential running mate, Gary Johnson.” According to MassLive, Weld offered these words about Clinton: “I’ve said what I’ve said about her in the past….I think she’s qualified, and you know, I’m not saying the same things as I’m saying about Donald Trump, put it that way.”

It’s hard to imagine this maneuver doing much to allay Libertarians’ long-standing suspicions of Weld’s motives and libertarian bonafides. Many people (myself included) are at least slightly more horrified at the prospect of a President Trump than a President Clinton, but we are also not on the ballot representing a third party desperate to clear the 5 percent voting threshold. I can’t see this convincing many Republicans to vote Libertarian (after all, he addressed it specifically “to all those in the electorate who remain torn between two so-called major party candidates”), but it’s pretty easy to see it at least semi-working as a virtue-signaling exercise aimed at Weld’s Trump-hating milieu.

Weld is continuing to actively campaign, including tomorrow in traditionally Libertarian-friendly Alaska. From our November issue, read an edited transcript of five interviews we conducted with the Libertarian Party ticket.

Donald Trump claims he has read the Constitution but, if so, he didn’t retain much. As a Yale Law School graduate, Hillary Clinton presumably has a better idea of what the Constitution says. But as she showed in her debate with Trump last week, that does not mean she cares.

Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional positions, such as his support for revoking birthright citizenship and his openness to registration of Muslims, tend to make a bigger splash than Clinton’s. But Clinton clearly poses a bigger threat in at least one respect, writes Jacob Sullum: She will be our next president, and Trump won’t.

View this article.

Yes, of course, Tom Hanks is out flogging his latest movie Inferno, the central plot of which involves an evil scientist who attempts to release a virus to kill off the world’s excess population. Although both promote delusions about Malthusian overpopulation, the movie plot is even more dire than that of the novel of the same title by Dan Brown on which it is based.

In any case, Tom Hanks on Today appears to be persuaded by Malthusian population doom prognostications. He told his NBC hosts that he had been taught the word “triage” by a history professor when he was a student at Chabot College. Hanks said that his professor told him that the word “represented the concept that eventually, the world will have too many people in it in order to subsist on its own.” He added that that was what Inferno is about – “the quantum physics of overpopulation – in an instant there could be too many people on the earth. And actually the math does add up.”

Well, while Malthusianism might make a good movie plot, it has certainly advanced the careers of many false prophets. Foremost among the false prophets of Malthusianism is Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich. In his 1968 screed, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich endorsed the notion of “triage” by which he meant that countries would be ranked by their ability to feed themselves. If they were deemed to be too overpopulated, then food aid would be cut off. For example, Ehrlich stated in 1968 that he agreed with an expert who predicted that India couldn’t “possibly feed 200 million more people by 1980.” Actually, India’s population grew by 170 million between 1968 and 1980 and the country was by then exporting grain to the Soviet Union.

To control the world’s burgeoning population Ehrlich proposed the idea that the world’s governments might introduce sterilants into supplies of water or staple foods. But he decided the notion was impractical due to “criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area.” While Ehrlich did not suggest releasing a virus to reduce surplus population, Britain’s more bloody-minded Prince Philip did. “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation,” said the consort of the U.K.’s queen in 1988.

With regard to Hanks’ odd claim that the “math does add up,” I suspect that he may be thinking of Ehrlich’s famous lily pad growth analogy. As one contemporary Malthusian explains it: “A farmer’s pond had a tiny lily pad that was doubling in size every day. He was warned that it would choke the pond in 30 days. He didn’t worry about it for 28 days because it seemed so small. On the 29th day it covered half the pond. He had to solve the problem in one day.”

World population was 3.5 billion in 1968 and is now 7.4 billion. Despite the latest rejiggering of the U.N.’s population trend projections, most demographers believe that the world’s population will never double again. So much for lily pad analogies.

Hanks is a wonderful actor. He should make it clear that his movie is based on fiction. Otherwise he may mislead his fans about the real and positive prospects for the human future.

For more background on the myths of overpopulation, see Reason TV’s interview with filmmaker Jessica Yu about her documentary Misconception below.

It’ll soon be all over for Donald Trump. He was already limping from many self-inflicted wounds by the time PussyGate broke. But that scandal repulsed women, giving Hillary Clinton a huge lead among them. But it would have been much better for feminism, argues Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia, if Hillary had lost to a good man rather than won against a bad one.

The notion that women are as capable as men of occupying high office is now firmly entrenched in the zeitgeist. A female U.S. president was a question of when not if. So feminists could have waited for a less flawed candidate. But now they’ll be stuck with one who can’t promote their cause without being jeered at and undercutting their movement.

View this article.

If man-made global warming produced by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels poses a significant problem, then most economists think that a revenue neutral carbon tax imposed at the minehead and the well-head is the cheapest and most efficient solution. So too should most environmental activists who are concerned about climate change. However, many environmentalist groups are surprisingly opposed to just such a proposal in Washington State.

Ballot Initiative 732 (I-732) would establish a tax on carbon emissions at $15 per metric ton of emissions in July 2017, $25 in July 2018, and then 3.5 percent plus inflation each year until the tax reaches $100 per metric ton. The tax would be phased in more slowly for farmers and nonprofit transportation providers. If adopted, I-732 could cut the state sales tax by one full percentage point from from 6.5 to 5.5 percent. It would fund the Working Families Rebate to provide up to $1500 a year for 400,000 low-income working households to counter their increased energy expenditures. And it would essentially eliminate the Business and Occupation Tax for manufacturers thus encouraging them to remain in the state.

I-732 aims to neither increase nor decrease state revenues; the new carbon tax would offset other taxes and there would be no additional revenue left over for Washington State politicians and bureaucrats to spend. The goal of the tax is to lower greenhouse gas emissions by incentivizing people to switch to low- and no-carbon based fuels. One would think that environmentalists would cheer and be urging Washington State residents to support I-732. However, a remarkably interesting article, “The left v. a carbon tax,” over at Vox explains how many Washington State environmentalist and progressive groups came to oppose I-732.

One huge reason for their opposition is that the left-leaning groups against I-732 are against to revenue neutrality; they want to use climate policy as a way to increase tax revenues in order to “invest” in clean energy and to support “climate justice” redistribution programs. Consequently, as Ramez Naam, who has worked with the group CarbonWA to get I-732 on ballot, emailed me that its progressive opponents are essentially arguing, “Let’s make the perfect the enemy of the really extremely good.” He added, “On its merits, I-732 would be the strongest climate policy in North America, extremely market based, and the most progressive change to the tax code in Washington State (and possibly the biggest anti-poverty initiative here) in 40 years.”

Actually, it is highly debatable that the revenue increasing proposals that Washington State’s soi-disant climate progressives would prefer to enact are in any sense more “perfect” than I-732.

Jerry Taylor, the president of the Niskanen Center libertarian policy shop, favors a revenue neutral carbon tax as a way to address concerns about climate change. When asked what he thought of I-732 Taylor responded in an email:

“I-732 gets it right for the state of Washington. The initiative make polluters pay for the risks and damages they are imposing on the rest of us … and then turns around and gives that money (in the form of a sales tax cut) to those they are putting at risk. Even if corporations passed all of the tax on to consumers, a majority of the citizens of Washington would gain more in tax reduction than they would pay in higher energy prices. It is not a perfect model for federal action in that existing regulatory authority to address greenhouse gas emissions would continue to exist, but it is nonetheless a very good start.”

Unfortunately, the opposition to I-732 by progressives is proving the salience of Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels’ tart observation: “Do you really think $3 trillion will walk down K Street unmolested? That’s what’s required for a ‘revenue neutral’ tax.” K Street is the notorious address for many of Washington, DC’s more prominent lobbyists.

On the other hand, if I-732 does succeed that will provide some hope for supporters that a carbon tax could pass unmolested. A recent poll found support for I-732 at 42 percent with 37 against, and 21 percent undecided. Stay tuned.

In 2014, the last time Florida voters considered a medical marijuana ballot initiative, opponents warned that doctor-approved pot cookies would abet rape. This year anti-pot groups are warning that cannabis candy made for patients could be surreptitiously handed out to children on Halloween, despite the fact that there are no confirmed cases of anything like that happening in the two decades since California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996.

“It is almost impossible for anyone, let alone a child, to tell a marijuana gummy bear or cookie from the real thing,” said Calvina Fay, director of the Drug Free America Foundation, at a press conference on Monday, a week before Halloween and two weeks before voters decide the fate of Amendment 2, which would allow the use of marijuana for the treatment of eight specified diseases as well as “other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated.” The No on 2 group Don’t Let Florida Go to Pot says “Florida children who go door to door for candy on Halloween may one day be at risk of receiving edible marijuana products if Amendment 2 comes to pass.” The group claims “it’s a very real scenario playing out in states like California, Washington and Colorado, where marijuana has been legalized.”

The Florida Sheriffs Association (FSA) has joined other opponents of Amendment 2 in hyping the mythical menace of marijuana edibles in trick-or-treat bags. “After other states approved legislation,” said FSA President Jerry Demings, the Orange County sheriff, “they saw a surge in marijuana edible products that are clearly attractive to children, advertised and marketed in commonly recognized edibles such as lollipops, candy bars, Pot-Tarts, and Krondike Bars.”

What those states did not see, however, was a surge in tots tripping on THC-tainted treats they got from sneaky strangers on Halloween. The hazard described by Fay and Demings did not materialize in Colorado after medical marijuana became legal there in 2001, after dispensaries began proliferating in 2009, or after state-licensed recreational sales started in 2014. If surreptitious dosing of trick-or-treaters with cannabis candy has happened in any of the two dozen other states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use, it seems to have escaped the attention of police and the press. The Orlando Sentinel reports that Demings “could not offer examples of children receiving laced Halloween candy in states where medical marijuana is legal.” Miami New Times noted that “zero cases” have been documented in Colorado or Washington, the first two states to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

That’s hardly surprising, since pot pranksters have little incentive to substitute expensive marijuana edibles for cheap Halloween candy, especially since they would not get to witness the results, which would kick in up to two hours after ingestion. The fear of cannabis-infused Halloween candy, which goes back a decade at least and has been used for political purposes in the past (against California’s Proposition 19 in 2010, for instance), is a variation on older urban legends about poison, needles, razor blades, and glass shards lurking in trick-or-treat bags. Last Halloween hysterical cops and yellow journalists put a new twist on these stories, warning parents that candy-colored MDMA tablets might be mixed in with their kids’ Jolly Rancher gummies and miniature peanut butter cups.