Fentanyl fears make 2022 the ‘scariest Halloween’ for Ashley Moody

Attorney General Ashley Moody continues to call attention to fentanyl, saying that its specter makes this “the scariest Halloween in (her) lifetime.”

Moody has issued stern warnings about adulterated candies ahead of Halloween 2022, and she brought that argument to the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office Tuesday.

Fentanyl, she said, “is now being manufactured to look like candy,” a choice made to “attract children.”

“It comes in rainbow colors. It can take all shapes or sizes,” Moody warned. “We’re seeing it in pill form. We’re seeing it in ways that could look like sidewalk chalk. We know that it’s being transported in candy packaging: Skittles, Sweet Tarts, Whoppers, Reese’s.”

The substances are being made to “look like candy” and are “packaged in candy wrappings in order to attract and addict children.”

The DEA has seized “thousands of these pills,” Moody said, with fentanyl being packaged in “toy boxes” such as a “Lego Box, for example.”

Moody urged parents to go through “their child’s candy extremely carefully,” even as she allowed that the chances of fentanyl candy were somewhat remote.

“Now, is the likelihood that a child’s going to have fentanyl in their trick-or-treat bag as likely as a child that goes to a party and takes something unwittingly? It’s probably a lower probability that it’s going to be in a trick-or-treat bag,” she conceded. “But we have found in the past illicit substances, highly toxic, dangerous substances in children’s Halloween bags.”

“So, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility,” Moody added.

The Attorney General warned dangers exist for “older children” also, who “go to parties.”

“In those situations, we are extraordinarily concerned that friends will offer them substances that they have no idea contain fentanyl,” Moody contended.

Moody has offered grim warnings for days about what could be an unhappy Halloween if the cartels follow through on this nefarious scenario.

“As a mother, it is terrifying,” Moody said Monday.

On Oct. 12, she offered Fox & Friends a warning along the same lines.

“We’re seeing them put it in candy packaging, like Nerds packaging. And Halloween’s coming up and those of us with young children have to have these conversations and start learning about the fentanyl crisis and warning our children,” Moody said.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has warned about so-called “rainbow fentanyl,” an “alarming emerging trend of colorful fentanyl” designed to appeal to “children and young people.” There have been federal indictments on trafficking charges related to this trend.