There’s a campaign in Witch-finders Meets NYPD Blue, I’m telling you.
Edible Effigies
This particular magical workaround occurs only in a magical tradition (we’ll call it ‘witchery,’ with apologies to benign — or very, very touchy — witches everywhere) that permits the remote cursing of individuals by the use of an effigy that has been enchanted to have a mystic link to the person being cursed. Needless to say, if that sort of thing is both demonstrable and reproducible then the practice will get swiftly banned by the local power structure, because typically the local power structure will inevitably end up being at high risk of being cursed. And when simply banning the spell’s use doesn’t work — it typically does not — the next step is to ban possession of the specialized ingredients and equipment used to create the effigies. That often can work, for a while. But it also does encourage a certain amount of creativity among the witches making the effigies, because banning this sort of thing also invariably makes it much more lucrative.