Dr Phil McGraw was fact-checked as he spoke about fentanyl being hidden in Halloween candy during his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
The TV personality was warning that children are getting hold of the pills through social media, with the conversation then moving on to rainbow-coloured fentanyl and the notion that it could appear to be Halloween candy.
“What they’re doing now, Joe, is they’re putting them in these pastel colours,” the 72-year-old said. “They’re making them look like these candies that the kids get. And kids are gonna see these things around and pick them up and think they’re like SweeTarts or whatever and bite into them.
“If I was a parent, I would go to the store and buy every kind of candy I could find and as soon as my kids came home from trick or treating, I would take their pumpkin and dump it into the trash and then fill it back up with candy I knew was good and hand it back to them,” he added. “I wouldn’t let them take a single piece of candy from trick or treating because you don’t know what’s in there.
“That was always the fear right, when we were kids, is that someone’s gonna sneak in a razor blade into an apple,” Mr Rogan said.
Several minutes into the discussion, Rogan’s producer interrupted to say that the story could be false, pointing to a report by NPR that there was no danger.
“Is ‘rainbow fentanyl’ a threat to your kids this Halloween? Experts say no,” a headline on NPR’s website said on 11 October.
“Let’s scroll down and see what they say,” Rogan said as he started to read the article.
US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram told NBC News that “it looks like candy” and that “some of the drug traffickers have nicknamed it Sweet Tarts, Skittles”.
While an alert from the DEA didn’t mention Halloween, concerns about so-called rainbow fentanyl and the October holiday still gained widespread attention.
“We have not seen any connection to Halloween,” Ms Milgram told Fox News.
The DEA published its warning on 30 August, but it garnered more attention this month when it was updated to include states where rainbow fentanyl had been found.
Mr Rogan read out the NPR article, which noted that drug experts didn’t see a fresh fentanyl threat this Halloween season. Experts were also critical of the initial alert from the agency, saying that they don’t think that Mexican drug cartels or dealers were looking to target children.
“I don’t think they’re targeting children,” Dr McGraw said.
“I think the fact that they are making these things in pastel colours makes children vulnerable to picking these things up. You wanna argue over the word ‘targeting’,” he added.
“I’m not saying they’re targeting, I don’t care if you use the word targeting or not – it’s dangerous. And I’m just saying, you know, my grandkids, they won’t be getting any candy out of that and it’s not that anywhere they’re going is gonna be dangerous, giving out fentanyl to kids. It’s just they don’t know where ... it’s coming from,” the TV host.
“You’re not getting it from a store,” Rogan said.
