My spouse (medical worker) has had drops on their hand that could take down entire precincts. Cops are dumb, scared little shits.
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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I’d encourage you to look into Chris Green, a cop in East Liverpool, Ohio, United States. This horseshit seems to be traced back to this guy.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1175726650/fentanyl-police-overdose-misinformation
Last December, Officer Courtney Bannick was on the job for the Tavares, Fla., police department when she came into contact with a powder she believed was street fentanyl.
The footage from another officer's body camera shows Bannick appearing to lose consciousness before being lowered to the ground by other cops.
"I was light-headed a little bit," Bannick later told WKMG, a local television station. "I was choking, I couldn't breathe."
Other officers can be heard on the tape describing Bannick's medical condition as an overdose. They administered Narcan, a medication that reverses opioid poisoning.
"She's breathing," a cop says. "Stay with me!"
🤨
Sounds to me like a panic attack.
I agree, and it seems like a bad feedback loop of exaggerated fears and poor reactions like these
Unpopular answer, but its possible those cops aren't lying. Specifically they are believing their own misinformation and giving themselves a panic attack.
a panic attack is not an OD
Pretty sure they're just saying that they probably are feeling some kind of symptoms but it's self inflicted and not actually drug related
i think we're saying the same thing, just that the line between lying and just not knowing what the fuck is going on is a lot thinner for a lot of us than we'd like to admit in medicine.
They’re saying placebo, you’re attributing it to malice.
@BeegScaaawyCripple@lemmy.world
Pretty much this. As far as it happening systemically? Hard to say, but if I may speculate we have fairly uniform reports of people feeling stuff at religious events. They are fully bought into the concept and feel they are in a spiritual or healing moment. Cops being that deep into their propaganda feels like it could be similar.
i mean, if it's happening systemically
You know how in the middle ages, the vast majority of the population was superstitious peasants who knew enough about their little slice of the world to get by in society but were ridiculously uninformed about everything else?
Modern society is running on the exact same hardware.
I got uninvited from helping to run a passover Seder after my friend's ex found out that the mental health facility I work at houses some drug users.
"My mother's group all agree it's not fair to expose my children to meth like that" 😂
I politely explained how this is disinfo and impossible, that 2nd-degree-removed aerial contact-highs violate several laws of reality.
The justice system lies.
It doesn't get you high by touching it.
Those cops were lying about their drug use. They did opiates and then blamed it on touching evidence.
Cops needed a reason to beat you up and shoot you.
Well fentanyl is dangerous you see. What a coincidence.
Wait, for real? I know a lot of people saying this is possible and I've read stories of it happening. I just believed it. I guess I just never felt I had a reason to look into it.
Cops started the rumor. Cops kept OD’ing after pocketing product from dealers they had busted. Instead of publicly admitting that they had a corruption and addiction problem, they started the myth that fentanyl can be absorbed through the skin. So when a cop needs narcan, they can just claim it was an accidental skin contact.
It is possible to absorb fentanyl through the skin, that part's not a myth. Transdermal patches are a thing.
Transdermal patches are mostly made of other ingredients that facilitate the skin transfer. By itself, fentanyl can be transferred through the skin, but it’s not great at actually doing so.
Thats not fentanyl slapped on an adhesive bandage. Thats specifically formulated with other additives to do that. Drug dealers would have to add a lot of time and know how just to REDUCE how effective the straight fent was.
those patches a medical miracle
Its not possible. Every medic and nurse has had more fentanyl on them unprotected than these cops could dream of.
Maybe if you ripped open a pack, shoved a leaf blower in there, and then stood in the aerosolized powder for awhile?
You will never OD from touching fentanyl, it doesnt penetrate the skin unless specicifically formulated to and drug dealers aren't doing extra massively skilled work to lower their products bioavailability.
Cops are being fucking weenies again.
I think this is a reference to a sensationalized US news story in 2020 where a US officer allegedly brushed off fentanyl powder on his shirt/uniform and reported accidental overdose by skin exposure.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lindseyellefson/fentanyl-accidental-exposure-police
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking/you-wont-die-touching-fentanyl
In med industry we laugh about cops saying they get high or overdosed on it by touching it. ?
Are you missing an article? Are you asking us whether you laugh at this? Shouldn't you know?
They have sythesized a dosage so potent that you can't touch it IIRC. They call it black death. There is also some other type that is not quite as bad but worse than the normal kind. It's name has a complicated chemical prefix I can no longer recall. Yay for the consequences of trying to get around a pointless drug war.
Edit: Carfentanyl is 100 times more potent that fentanyl. There is still one that even worse though.