Get Ready For 2016's Fake Tainted Halloween Candy Scares

Every year, headlines are filled with reports of tainted Halloween candy. Razor blades in apples! How would you hide one without making it completely obvious? They never say. Poisoned candy! But every kid knows exactly who gave what candy - if you wanted to hurt kids, giving out poisoned candy would be no more secretive than chasing kids around your neighborhood waving a rake.

Let's review 2015's Halloween candy danger scares that made national headlines. Not one of them was even confirmed as an actual attempt to hurt children, never mind an incident that actually hurt a child:

• Gloucester, NJ: Man arrested for making own tainted candy & falsely reporting it
• Kennett Square, PA: Kids admit making up report of finding needles in Twix bars
• Hudson, NH: Cause never publicly identified for razor blade allegedly found in trick-or-treating bag; two years before in a neighboring town, a "razor blade in trick-or-treating bag" turned out to have fallen out of a pencil case
• Manistee, MI: Razor blade in candy turned out to have been a hoax by a family member with mental health issues. 
• Hopkinton, MA: New, wrapped discs of toilet bowl cleaner found in trick-or-treating bags, despite kids not being able to say who gave them out. This was apparently supposed to be dangerous because kids are so stupid they'll eat toilet bowl cleaner.

Poisoned Halloween candy is an urban legend, but that doesn't stop local and even national news from reporting every flimsy story as a WARNING FOR PARENTS TONIGHT. The follow-up news confirming the hoax inevitably gets much less coverage.

Don't inspect your kids' Halloween candy - it scares them for no reason.

And to follow the latest scares - which again, are almost always fake - follow Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids blog.