This Year’s Biggest Halloween Fright? Rainbow Fentanyl

President Donald Trump’s drug czar is urging parents to check their children’s candy on Halloween, warning about brightly colored fentanyl pills that look like sweets.

Sara Carter, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, told The Daily Wire she is concerned about “rainbow fentanyl” — which she described as “illicit fentanyl packaged in colorful pills that resemble candy.”

The DEA first warned about the pills in 2022, describing them as a “deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.”

“This is targeting American children — when you’re producing illicit fentanyl, and you’re making it colorful, and you’re putting it out on the streets,” Carter told The Daily Wire. “Many children have no idea what this is. A friend could give them a pill. It looks like it’s fun, it looks like candy, and they take it, and it’s the end of their life.”

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In September, a federal judge sentenced an Arizona woman to 17 years in prison for leading a drug-trafficking organization. Authorities said she claimed to have conceived the idea for rainbow fentanyl to boost sales for the Sinaloa Cartel.

According to Carter, small children are especially at risk because “if you have a toddler or a small child that comes into contact with or sees one of these, they’re obviously going to think it’s candy.”

As a precaution, Carter urges parents to check the candy their kids collect after trick-or-treating, avoid unwrapped treats, and stay in safe neighborhoods on Saturday night.

Carter said her own children would still go out for Halloween. She recommended that parents discuss the risks of drugs with their kids “in a way that is age-appropriate.” She also pointed to church- and community-sponsored trunk-or-treats as an alternative.

“Let them know that you love them and care about them and that you want them to have fun, but that they can’t eat anything until you get it home, or they get it home, and you can inspect it,” she said.

The issue is personal for Carter, whose son and son-in-law have both lost close friends to fentanyl, she told The Daily Wire.

Carter’s son lost one of his closest friends after high school when the friend took a pill he thought was Xanax that ended up being laced with fentanyl. Her son-in-law, a law school graduate, lost a close friend from his football team who died after using a drug laced with fentanyl at a party.

“So I hear stories like this all the time,” she said. “Look, it’s just better to be safe than sorry.”

Carter, who took over as President Trump’s drug czar in January, credited his policies for a steep decline in overdose deaths — down nearly 40% from the peak during the Biden administration.

The CDC estimates there were 69,973 overdose deaths in 2025, the third consecutive year of declines. That compares with approximately 112,000 in the 12-month period ending May 2023.

Carter pointed to the designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which she said expanded the government’s ability to target them “at every single level” with a whole-of-government approach. Trump also signed an executive order in December 2025 designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

When she first got into office, Carter said she prioritized making emerging threats “Chapter One” of her office’s 2026 National Drug Control Strategy, released in May. She said her office is working with the CDC to expand wastewater testing nationwide to identify emerging drug threats.

Her office has also issued warnings about cychlorphine and medetomidine, the latter also known as “rhino tranq.”

Despite the progress against overdoses, Carter said, “Still, one life is far too many.”

“Take 10 minutes to go through your kids’ bag and just make sure that there’s nothing in there that can harm them, and you’re going to have a great Halloween night,” she said.

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