Parenting & Family Quote by Steve Almond

Calling candy "basically crack for children" is a provocation designed to short-circuit nostalgia. Steve Almond isn’t offering a cute hot take about sweets; he’s staging a moral indictment of an industry that markets pleasure with the cold efficiency of a drug dealer, then hides behind the innocence of childhood delight. The line works because it yokes two cultural registers that rarely meet politely: the pastel world of treats and the dark, adult language of addiction. That clash creates the jolt, and the jolt is the point.

Almond’s intent is less about literal pharmacology than about the behavioral loop: craving, reward, repetition. By framing candy as something that makes kids "dependent in unwholesome ways", he shifts the focus from individual parenting choices to a system of engineered desire. "Production" matters here. He’s not scolding a child for wanting sugar; he’s questioning the legitimacy of making and selling a product optimized for compulsion, especially when the consumer is too young to consent in any meaningful way.

The subtext is a critique of how capitalism launders manipulation into tradition. Halloween, birthday parties, the checkout aisle bribe - these are cultural rituals that normalize a small transaction: obedience for sweetness, comfort for chemicals. Almond’s cynicism lands because it names the uncomfortable truth adults already suspect but prefer to soften: we teach kids to self-soothe with consumption, then act surprised when the habit sticks.