We’ve said it time and time again: there is practically zero logical reason for drug traffickers to get kids hooked on narcotics, mainly because drugs are expensive. The idea of drug dealers constantly slipping their valuable narcotics into kids’ food so that they grow up to become addicts seems like a hell of an unrealistic long-term investment.
Yet hoax stories about candy being laced with narcotics continue to spread in Indonesia, despite being consistently shot down by officials.
The latest hoax story emerged last week. It began when a concerned parent posted on Facebook accusing a milk-flavored candy of containing drugs and leading to children losing their appetite and appearing high over several days. The post even claimed that they got the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) to investigate the candy, the result of which is that it was found to contain the psychoactive drug benzodiazepine.
But that’s not what BNN actually said.
“The candy has been tested in a BPOM (Food and Drugs Monitoring Agency) lab and it does not contain narcotics,” BNN Public Relations Officer Sulistiandriatmo said today, as quoted by Kumparan.
A member of parliament, Dede Yusuf, who had been monitoring the case, confirmed that the viral post is a hoax. He also said he received information that only one kid exhibited the symptoms described in the viral post, but it was only because he was suffering from a cold.
We get that for parents, it’s easy to freak out over unsubstantiated rumors if it concerns their children’s well-being. It also doesn’t help that BNN Chief Budi Waseso (the man who wants to build a special prison for drug dealers guarded by crocodiles) has publicly said that drug dealers are trying to get kids hooked early, even though his agency has never been able to find evidence to back up that claim.
Yet it’s truly a shame that hoaxes like these are still able to go viral. At best, it shows just how gullible and susceptible to scaremongering many people are; at worst, people like the candy producers can lose their livelihoods over this kind of fake news.
