Annapolis Capital Punishment

HALLOWEEN EXCESSES AND DENTIST'S CANDY BUY-BACKS (This is an update from a post one year ago)

Dentists, supposedly the guardians of good mouth care have set up Halloween candy "buyback programs." On the "face" of it, they may sound like great things, so here goes, at the risk of getting kicked in the teeth, CP would like to again register his disdain as he did so in letters to the editor and in a CP post a year ago as mentioned.

I am fed up with all this Halloween craziness and the crass commercialism of this once fun holiday that used to bring out the best in family creativity, but the real toothy issue is gooey, sticky, sugar laden, fatty candy. Beyond the dental issue, we have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes and other diet-induced maladies, but while a little bit of candy once in a while is not so bad, a lot of candy is bad. I see fat kids at school, on the soccer team, at the bus stop and worse of all--at the pool. They eat junk, watch tv and don't run and play like we used to do. What ever happened to collecting pennies for UNICEF?


Here is how it often works:
Kids collect all the free candy they can
They bring it in to a dentist and get something like a dollar per pound
The dentist gives a dollar per pound to charity.
In some cases, the candy goes to a local food bank!
Some dentists send the candy to our troops in Iraq
(Food bank or Iraq, it all adds a whole other weird dimension because we all know none of us at home are making any sacrifice...sacrifice? saccharin??)

One local orthodontist, Dr. Mairead O'Reilly has done this for years and runs expensive ads promoting her buyback program, which she calls a "monstrous success." CP calls it "monstrous excess." Through this, the good doctor has donated money to local charities and to an organization called The Smile Train which provides corrective surgery for children born with cleft palates. I salute the good doctor for that, yet something does not sit right.

What's wrong with this?
The kids do nothing, give nothing, learn nothing and sacrifice nothing!
They have fun getting candy for free and their parents drive them in to the dentist.
Most of the kids don't even make a costume anymore. (Hey-why don't they do costume buybacks???). Homeowners buy the candy, give it to the kids who give it to the doctor who gives them a dollar. What do the kids do with the money they just got from collecting things for free and selling them? What kind of a lesson is that?

It is easy to think of all the more positive ways this whole thing could be changed, starting with replacing the whole candy thing with messages and activities about eating right, nutrition and hunger. Instead, kids are encouraged to collect yet more candy and they still keep and eat lots of candy. Conspicuous consumption of highly marketed junk food.

They try to collect more to get more money and still have enough to rot their teeth.
After collecting their favorites, they make it into a big competition about who collected more.
They learn little if nothing about proper health or dentistry.
They are not encouraged to refrain from candy and eat real food.
Plenty of the kids coming in to the doctor's office will still be FAT and lead LAZY lives.

THE VERY IDEA OF SENDING THE UNWANTED CANDY (yes because the kids will choose their least favorite brands) TO A LOCAL FOOD BANK MEANS WHAT? It means that instead of local children learning about inequality and poverty here, or about hunger and poor health here, they let the good doctor deal with that "sticky" issue and people living here with real health and nutrition deficiencies get the "giveaway" candy.

LET THEM EAT CANDY, I say!!!

Giving candy to a food bank??? Oh yeah, and how will those families get proper dental care? Will Dr. O'Reilly provide them with free dental care after they've chewed all the Mary Janes and Tootsie Rolls? We all know that children in poverty have worse diets than other children and less access to health care--so why do we send them the candy our kids reject!

Sending the candy to Iraq is even weirder in many respects, but that's another story. The kids who are lucky to get all this free candy come away with cash!!! Cash they earned from you and me giving them candy that they sold to a dentist who should be saying "STOP!!".

Really--what kind of mixed up messages are we sending? That you can get something for nothing? Candy is bad for you, therefore go get as much as you want and we'll give it the candy you don't want to kids and their families who are much less fortunate than you and it's okay for them to eat it...and we'll call it food? Where does this end?? There is even a Halloween candy buyback page that lists dentists across the country who participate? See: yuck! (Did you know there is an official Root Canal Appreciation Day?)

I'm ready to get kicked in the teeth now. Witches and ghosts may come after me, but I implore you to kindly smile before you scream at me. I'm going to chew on an apple, some cheese and popcorn....hopefully grown locally....and organically...to support our farmers....and keep me lean and cavity-free.

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