By Henry Larweh, Kff Health News
Fentanyl, deadly synthetic opioid stimulating high levels of overdose of drugs in the country, is also taken in another increasingly serious problem: disinformation.
False and misleading accounts on social networks, reports, and even in popular television dramas suggesting that people can overdose to touch fentanyl – rather than ingestion – now inform politics and expenditure decisions.
In an episode of the CBS Cop drama “Blue Bloods”, for example, the detective Maria Baez becomes comatous after accidentally touched fentanyl powder. In another drama, “Swat”, the SGT. Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson warns his colleagues: “You touch the pure stuff without wearing gloves, say good night.”
While fentanyl deaths have increased considerably over the past decade, no evidence suggests that everything has been the result of the accidentally, and little or no evidence that results from consumption in marijuana products. (Recent data indicates that fentanyl deaths have started to drop.)
There is almost no proof that the staff of the police run an increased risk of accidental overdoses due to such exhibitions. However, there is a constant flow of reports – which generally prove to be false – of officers who will become sick after having manipulated fentanyl.
“It is only in television dramas” where it happens, said Brandon Del Pozo, a retired police chief in Burlington, Vermont, who does research on public health policies and practices at Brown University.
In fact, fentanyl overdoses are generally caused by illicit drug ingestion such as a pill or a powder. And most accidental exhibitions occur when people who consume drugs, even those who do not use opioids, unconsciously consume fentanyl because it is so often used to “cut” street drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
Despite what scientific evidence suggests on fentanyl and its risks, disinformation can persist in public discourse and among the first stakeholders on the front line of the crisis. Daniel Meloy, specialist in community commitment higher than the operation of drug takeover organizations 2 Save Lives and QRT National, said that he considered disinformation as “more unknown than it was anxiety or fear”.
“We often experience it before information” can be understood and shared by public medicine and drug addiction practitioners, said Meloy.
Some governments of states and premises invest money because of their billions of opioid settlement funds in efforts to protect the first stakeholders against the alleged risks perpetuated by the disinformation of fentanyl.
In 2022 and 2023, 19 cities, villages and counties of eight states used settlement funds to buy drug detection devices for law enforcement organizations, spending just over a million dollars. Two mass spectrometers were purchased for at least $ 136,000 for the Greeley police service, Colorado, “to protect those responsible for managing these substances”.
Del Pozo, the retired police chief, said fentanyl was present in most illicit opioids found at the scene of an arrest. But that “does not mean that you need to spend a lot of money for fentanyl detection for the security of officers,” he said. If this spending decision is motivated by officers’ security problems, then it is “Miss Expertiment,” said Del Pozo.
Fentanyl disinformation also affects politics in other ways.
Florida, for example, has a law on books on the second degree crime to cause an overdose or body injury to a first speaker thanks to this type of exposure to used fentanyl. Similar legislation has been examined by states such as Tennessee and Virginia-Western, the latter stipulating a lifetime 15-year sentence if the exposure leads to death.
Public health defenders fear that these laws will fear people to seek help for overdose.
“Many people leave overdose scenes because they do not want to interact with the police,” said Erin Russell, director at Health Management Associates, a health care industry and advice. Florida includes a warning in its status according to which anyone “acting in good faith” to request medical aid from someone they believe to be “may not be arrested, charged or prosecuted.
And even when public policy is developed to protect the first stakeholders as well as ordinary people, disinformation can undermine the messaging of a program.
Take the Mississippi One Pill initiative. Led by the State Prosecutor General, Lynn Fitch, the initiative aims to provide resources and education to Mississippi residents on fentanyl and its risks. Although it promotes the availability and use of harm reduction tools, such as Naloxone and Fentanyl test strips, Fitch also supported disinformation.
During the conference of the surety coalition of the Mississippi 2024 surety, Fitch said: “If you discover that the pill has fentanyl, you would better be ready to dispose of it, because you can pass it through your fingers”, on the basis of repeated belief several times that a person can overdose by simply touching the fentanyl.
The officers on the ground, on the other hand, are sometimes warned to be cautious by providing vital interventions in overdose scenes because of these alleged accidental exposure risks. This caution is often highlighted in pressure to provide the first stakeholders with masks and other personal protective equipment. Fitch told the crowd at the conference: “You can’t just go out and give RCR as you have done before.” However, as with other second -hand exhibitions, the risk of fentanyl overdose from the application of the mouth to the mouth is negligible, without any clinical evidence suggesting that it has occurred.
His comments highlight increasing concerns, often not supported by science, that officers and first stakeholders face increasingly risk of exposure during the responses on overdose. His office did not answer questions about these comments.
Health care experts say they are not against the supply of the protection equipment for the first stakeholders, but that the fentanyl disinformation combines policy and risks delaying critical interventions such as RCR and rescue breathing.
“People are afraid of making rescue breathing because they say to themselves:” Well, and if there is fentanyl in the mouth of the person “, said Russell. Even hesitating it for a moment because of fentanyl’s disinformation could delay a technique that “is incredibly important in an overdose response”.
© 2025 Kff Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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