A widely-shared video shows a deputy overdosing on fentanyl. Experts say it's 'impossible.'

[Nevilledog]

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james stout
@jamesstout
Here it is! My piece in Poynter about the manifest failure of the @sdut to do very basic fact-checking and their willingness to spread anti drug user (and anti-science) lies for the police. Thanks so much for the help @RyanMarino & @clairezagorski

A widely-shared video shows a deputy overdosing on fentanyl. Experts say it’s ‘impossible.’ -...
Toxicologists say it’s not possible to overdose from fentanyl by touching it, and reporting that claims as much is dangerous.
poynter.org
8:07 AM · Aug 13, 2021

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/a-widely-shared-video-shows-a-deputy-overdosing-on-fentanyl-experts-say-its-impossible/

On Aug. 5, The San Diego Union-Tribune ran a story with the headline “’I’m not going to let you die’: Deputy overdoses after coming into contact with fentanyl.” The story contained an embedded video from a body-worn camera that was edited and shared by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department.

The Union-Tribune was clear about the cause and consequences of Deputy David Faiivae’s supposed collapse after coming into contact with fentanyl. The opening paragraph painted a stark picture: “The accidental fentanyl exposure hit Deputy David Faiivae quickly. It was an overdose. He was dying.”

There’s just one problem. “For all intents and purposes, it is physically and chemically impossible” to overdose from fentanyl merely by touching it, according to Ryan Marino, a doctor specializing in toxicology. “It has never happened.”

Even specifically designed transdermal patches “take 12 or more hours to get a therapeutic dose, let alone an overdose,” Marino said.

In the video, Cpl. Scott Crane, Faiivae’s partner, says Faiivae collapsed in “a couple of seconds.” Despite a preponderance of evidence, the myth that fentanyl can cause an overdose merely through touching it is so common that the American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology issued a joint position on the transdermal absorption of fentanyl that states that “even a high dose of fentanyl prepared for transdermal administration cannot rapidly deliver a high dose.”

*snip*

[brush]

1. So a lot of people were pushing out a lie. Why, for what purpose?

Was the cop in on it too, or did he pass out from a different medical emergency and people just concluded that it was from touching the fentanyl?

[dalton99a]

2. Sheriff Bill Gore confirmed that it was him, and not a medical professional, who made the "diagnosis

Claire Zagorski, program coordinator of the pharmacy addictions research and medicine at The University of Texas at Austin, said that sharing what she called “social contagion” narratives around fentanyl can and does result in negative public health outcomes.

“If you keep seeing news reports where grown men are taken down in moments by being near this medicine, it makes absolute sense that laypeople are not going to be willing to touch someone having an overdose and give them Narcan,” Zagorski said. “I don’t think that is the point, but it is a very logical outcome and it is really heartbreaking.”

The erroneous assumption that fentanyl is causing officers to collapse often leads to people who use the drug being charged with endangering an officer, Marino said.

Zagorski, who has practiced as a paramedic, speculated that widespread misreporting around fentanyl might be the cause of Faiivae’s unfortunate and doubtless traumatic collapse.

“This is not terribly unique,” she said. “What it looks really consistently to be is an anxiety reaction. We will see people breathing quickly and shallowly, they break out in a cold sweat, they often say their hands and feet were tingling. I do believe that happened to you, and that you felt that, and that you fainted, and you went down. I am saying that is an anxiety reaction. If you had been exposed to fentanyl to the point that it caused an overdose, you would not be breathing quickly.”