Dirty Needle in the Halloween Candy Bag? Nobody Panic

Oh how I cackled! Reason TV’s Jim Epstein and I
posted a video of me in a witch hat explaining
“The Three Ways Parents are Ruining Halloween.” One way
was with over-hyped fears of poisoned candy.

But recently, a reader informed me that this year, two children found needles in their
candy up in Canada. What did I have to say about
that?

A lot, as it turned out. Mostly about keeping risk in
perspective, which can make a gal sound truly witch-like. See, if
you fan the flames of hysteria—”No child is safe!”—you are seen as
a caring individual. Or at least a caring TV correspondent, with a
special report at 11. Stay tuned! But if you fan the flames of
rationality, you risk sounding heartless. As I wrote on my blog, Free-Range Kids:

We can dutifully tell kids not to eat a single bite of candy
till they bring it home and we “vigilantly” comb through it, as an
article about the pins-in-candy suggests. But I believe we are
actually allowed to say, “The chance is so infinitesimal, let’s not
worry about it.”

Those words are almost blasphemous in a world that warns about
every horror that happens anywhere, no matter how rare or remote.
But the alternative—actively fretting about each incredibly slight
chance of disaster—is a warped way to live.

Warped, yes. But popular. Now all of Canada is worrying about
two needles, despite the fact that more than $2 billion worth of
Halloween candy is sold throughout North America. Assuming each
dollar buys just five pieces of candy (and way more of the cheap
stuff I buy), the odds of finding a projectile in any one of them
is 1 in 10,000,000,000.

Those are good odds.
So good, you’ll never hear them on TV. That is what’s so
scary.