Trick-Or-Treat Make Sure You Check Your Candy Before You Eat
By: Katelyn Martinez (8)
As the night ends and the porch lights are turned off, you go home, take off your spooky makeup or your Halloween costume, go and sit down on the floor, and dump all of your Halloween candy out. Be sure to check your candy, because as you might have seen on TV or heard from your parents, there are some scary candy looking drugs out there.
If you haven’t heard about this, let me give you some things to be on the lookout for. The latest, fentanyl drug, is made to look like candy. Some may say it looks like flintstone vitamins. They are colorful, typically bright, and they are deadly! I talked to some of my classmates to see what they would do if they found one.
Olivia Mercado, an 8th grader, said, “If I find some, I will probably just throw them away or just give them to my parents and let them deal with it.”
While several people are in agreement with Olivia, 8th grader, Yoshselin Ordaz is a bit more concerned. “I am scared because they can be in plain sight and you wouldn’t even know if it was there. I just have to look twice at my candy before I eat it.”
What happens if you unknowingly ingest fentanyl and what are the side effects? It may cause dizziness, nausea, vomiting, urinary and respiratory depression. It could even lead to death when it is taken in high doses or with other substances like alcohol or other drugs such as heroin, cocaine or even prescription drugs. In 2020 over 950 kids through the age of 14 to 18 years old have died because of fentanyl.
What happens if you find one in your candy bag? What can you do first? You should call your local authorities to tell them what you have found and wait for them. If you are the least bit curious, DO NOT eat the candy. Throw it away. Better safe than sorry.
A new generation means more kids have started to try drugs because of how influential it is to this generation. You can get drugs anywhere now. But remember, drugs can cause harm to your body. They are especially harmful because of how young we still are, and how our bodies are still developing. These things put together can cause harm later when you’re an adult. So don’t do drugs, it is not worth losing your life and BE CAREFUL THIS HALLOWEEN.