‘Caution is key!’: Rick Scott warns ‘drug cartels’ targeting Halloween candy

Rick Scott. Image via AP.

A U.S. Senator from Florida is offering a grim warning that Halloween treats may be laden with tricks from transnational “drug cartels.”

Hours before Florida children hit the streets with empty buckets for goodies, Rick Scott is warning that “Joe Biden’s open borders” have opened the portal for Halloween horrors.

“Parents: PLEASE make sure your kids’ candy is safe this Halloween,” Scott tweeted from his official account. “Joe Biden’s open borders have made it easier than ever for drug cartels to target America’s children with rainbow colors and candy-like packaging. Caution is key!”

Though skeptics scoff, the issue is apparently a live one this year. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 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.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram contended, “Rainbow fentanyl — fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes and sizes — is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.”

Scott has offered warnings before about corrupted confections, including on a Newsmax hit last week.

“Children have to be worried about candy at Halloween,” Scott contended, because of open borders. 

However, the Senator hasn’t been the leading Florida Republican spotlighting this issue this fall. Attorney General Ashley Moody continues to call attention to fentanyl, saying during a press conference last week that its specter makes this “the scariest Halloween in (her) lifetime.”

“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.”

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.”