Children are statistically in more danger from trusted family members than they ever could be from any stranger.

While I agree wholeheartedly, it’s also worth acknowledging that a large part of this statistical bias is simply because children spend more 1-on-1 time around those trusted adults. No parent with good intentions is just handing their kids off to random strangers and leaving them alone for extended periods of time. Those trusted adults have more opportunities to abuse a child, because they are trusted to be alone with the child.

It’s the same reason that like 80% of all car wrecks happen within 5 miles of your home. It’s not that driving near your home is statistically more dangerous; it’s that you do most of your driving near your home, so there are more opportunities for wrecks to happen near your home.

And Halloween is a weird sort of social paradox, where we are societally expected to suddenly place a lot of trust in random strangers. So those strangers suddenly have an opportunity to affect your kids that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. But also, random poisoning is such a niche form of abuse that it isn’t statistically likely, even with the relaxed social expectations. There have been a few notable examples of random poisoning, (as a notable example, it’s why OTC medications have tamper-evident seals). But the type of person who would do something like that would also likely be smart enough to avoid doing it in a way that would be easily traceable back to them, (like handing the poison out directly from their own home).

I can think of plenty of people whom I genuinely think would consider taking a long walk off a short pier if they suddenly had absolutely nothing to be afraid of, complain about, or be angry about. Misery is like food and drink to some.

Children are statistically in more danger from trusted family members than they ever could be from any stranger.

Know what's "funny" about that? The myth in question comes from ONE case of a dad (Ronald Clark O'Bryan) using it to kill his kids (only one died), poisoned their pixie sticks with potassium cyanide, all for the life insurance claim.