Let's start with the saga of rainbow fentanyl.

Halloween's right around the corner.

The DEA warning that deadly rainbow fentanyl could end up inside of a candy bag of your kid.

I first heard about this stuff last month.

It all started with a warning from the DEA over pastel colored opioids.

And that turned into a warning that fentanyl could end up in your kids' Halloween candy.

This was a ridiculous idea.

It looks like candy.

And in fact, some of the drug traffickers have nicknamed it sweet tarts, skittles.

It has nothing to do with candy.

To be honest, I mostly heard about Rainbow Fentanyl because people in my social media feeds were dunking on how quickly it got spun up into a political weapon.

Like, this is Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican Party, appearing on Fox News, in what is theoretically a segment about the November midterms.

Every mom in the country right now is worried, what if this gets into my kid's Halloween basket?

You're talking about the rainbow fentanyl. What if my teenager gets this?

I'm talking to you about rainbow fentanyl now, because to me, the way this story spread was instructive.

It morphed in this way that a lot of stories about drugs do, from a real fear about a drug that is dangerous to a manufactured one. And it seemed like some of the only people taking any of that fear

seriously were on Fox News. Brian Mann, who covers drug use and abuse over at NPR, he noticed

this too.

It sort of almost for a moment felt like the old days of drug war, just say no narrative.

Be very afraid. Be very, very afraid. And of course, at the kernel of it, that's because

there is this scary thing happening out there. And the Republicans really did find a way to sort

of, you know, insert that narrative into their talking points.

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