Jail Time For An “Imaginary Crime”: It’s Almost Impossible To Overdose Just By Touching Fentanyl,
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Police officers are collapsing after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact. The likelier story? Panic attacks.
Erin Schumaker
Oct 27, 2021, 9:01 AM
Police officers are collapsing after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact. The likelier story? Panic attacks.
San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy David Faiivae receiving aid from an officer after being exposed to fentanyl on July 3. Experts say it's unlikely that Faiivae was overdosing.
San Diego County Sheriff's Department via AP
The video is harrowing: It shows a San Diego deputy crumpling to the ground in a parking lot after accidentally touching white powder during an arrest.
"I got you, OK? I'm not going to let you die," someone said in a voice-over. Then someone yelled, "I need Narcan!"
In the video, Deputy David Faiivae, the officer in training who collapsed, wiped away a tear after describing how his lungs locked up that day in July.
"I almost died of a fentanyl overdose," Faiivae, 32, said. Then Bill Gore, the sheriff of San Diego County, appeared on-screen with a public-service message
"Being exposed to just a few small grains of fentanyl could have deadly consequences," Gore said. He added, "Please take the time to share this video."
But experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why did the San Diego police officer collapse?
If cops aren't overdosing from touching fentanyl, what is happening?
A chemical specialist in a protective suit with pills seized at a clandestine fentanyl processing lab in Mexico City on December 12, 2018.
Attorney General's Office/Handout via Reuters
It's not that fentanyl isn't dangerous. A record 93,000 drug-overdose deaths were reported last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, and potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are the most common drugs involved in those deaths.
But skin contact with fentanyl is different, experts say.
"The only way to overdose is from injecting, snorting, or some other way of ingesting it," Dr. Ryan Marino, the medical director of toxicology at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told The New York Times. "You cannot overdose from secondhand contact."
Moreover, the symptoms people describe after touching fentanyl vary widely, from dizziness to blurry vision to heart palpitations.
"Passive exposure to fentanyl does not result in clinical toxicity," Dr. Lewis Nelson, the director of the medical toxicology division at Rutgers Medical School, wrote in a STAT News op-ed in 2018. He added that the reactions usually resolve on their own, and faster than the drug's effects should last.
"They aren't consistent with the signs and symptoms of opioid poisoning — the triad of slowed breathing, decreased consciousness, and pinpoint pupils," Nelson wrote.
But the police officer in San Diego wasn't the only one to collapse. Officers in Ohio, Arkansas, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina have also struggled to breathe or fainted after touching fentanyl. Faiivae declined to comment on the incident. The New Republic's "The Politics of Everything" podcast set out to solve this mystery last month, and it concluded that officers were having panic attacks, fueled by misinformation.
Erin Schumaker
Oct 27, 2021, 9:01 AM
Police officers are collapsing after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact. The likelier story? Panic attacks.
San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy David Faiivae receiving aid from an officer after being exposed to fentanyl on July 3. Experts say it's unlikely that Faiivae was overdosing.
San Diego County Sheriff's Department via AP
- Cops have collapsed after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact.
- Police officers may be experiencing a disorder that converts stress into physical symptoms.
- Misinformation is swirling about the risk of fentanyl exposure on the job for police officers.
The video is harrowing: It shows a San Diego deputy crumpling to the ground in a parking lot after accidentally touching white powder during an arrest.
"I got you, OK? I'm not going to let you die," someone said in a voice-over. Then someone yelled, "I need Narcan!"
In the video, Deputy David Faiivae, the officer in training who collapsed, wiped away a tear after describing how his lungs locked up that day in July.
"I almost died of a fentanyl overdose," Faiivae, 32, said. Then Bill Gore, the sheriff of San Diego County, appeared on-screen with a public-service message
"Being exposed to just a few small grains of fentanyl could have deadly consequences," Gore said. He added, "Please take the time to share this video."
But experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why did the San Diego police officer collapse?
If cops aren't overdosing from touching fentanyl, what is happening?
A chemical specialist in a protective suit with pills seized at a clandestine fentanyl processing lab in Mexico City on December 12, 2018.
Attorney General's Office/Handout via Reuters
It's not that fentanyl isn't dangerous. A record 93,000 drug-overdose deaths were reported last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, and potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are the most common drugs involved in those deaths.
But skin contact with fentanyl is different, experts say.
"The only way to overdose is from injecting, snorting, or some other way of ingesting it," Dr. Ryan Marino, the medical director of toxicology at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told The New York Times. "You cannot overdose from secondhand contact."
Moreover, the symptoms people describe after touching fentanyl vary widely, from dizziness to blurry vision to heart palpitations.
"Passive exposure to fentanyl does not result in clinical toxicity," Dr. Lewis Nelson, the director of the medical toxicology division at Rutgers Medical School, wrote in a STAT News op-ed in 2018. He added that the reactions usually resolve on their own, and faster than the drug's effects should last.
"They aren't consistent with the signs and symptoms of opioid poisoning — the triad of slowed breathing, decreased consciousness, and pinpoint pupils," Nelson wrote.
But the police officer in San Diego wasn't the only one to collapse. Officers in Ohio, Arkansas, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina have also struggled to breathe or fainted after touching fentanyl. Faiivae declined to comment on the incident. The New Republic's "The Politics of Everything" podcast set out to solve this mystery last month, and it concluded that officers were having panic attacks, fueled by misinformation.
from the jump
"People are probably familiar with what in the 19th century or early 20th century was called hysteria," Patrick Blanchfield, an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research who specializes in psychoanalytic theory, told "The Politics of Everything."
In classic hysteria cases, symptoms present as temporary paralysis, Blanchfield added: "People's limbs would lock up. They would start screaming, wailing — no apparent reason."
In modern-day terms, police officers may be experiencing a conversion disorder — when intense stress is converted into physical symptoms, Blanchfield explained. It's similar to a panic attack.
Blanchfield didn't think the officers were exaggerating or collapsing on purpose. He believed they were truly scared.
"That suffering is real," he said.
Policing is a stressful and dangerous job, so news stories and police reports about officers who are said to have overdosed during drug busts might have led to a contagion effect, in which certain behaviors or actions spread through a group.
"When your whole job is maintaining boundaries, but also those boundaries are unstable and full of contradictions, it's probably not surprising that people develop conversion disorders and contagion fears specifically, that they seize up or act out," Blanchfield said.
Confusing panic attacks with overdoses has real consequences
The Tulare County Sheriff's Office showed evidence seized after a traffic stop led officers to a major methamphetamine- and fentanyl-trafficking operation in Pixley, California, in January 2020.
Tulare County Sheriff's Office/AP
Police forces are part of a larger misinformation problem, harm-reduction experts say. News articles, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the CDC have all spread hyperbolic, unvetted, or false information about the risk of overdose from touching fentanyl.
A paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy last year said news articles containing misinformation about fentanyl were shared at least 450,000 times on Facebook between 2015 and 2019, potentially reaching upward of 70 million users. By comparison, posts correcting false information about fentanyl were shared 30,000 times.
Leah Hill, a behavioral-health fellow with the Baltimore City Health Department, displayed a sample of Narcan nasal spray on January 23, 2018.
Patrick Semansky/AP
Misinformation is a threat to both law-enforcement officers and people who use drugs, since the latter group may not be rescued during an overdose if responders or witnesses fear for their own lives.
Additionally, those who possess drugs may face harsher sentencing because of this confusion. In 2017, for example, an Ohio police officer told news outlets that he'd used his bare hand to brush grains of fentanyl off his uniform during a drug bust. An hour later, he said, he keeled over from an overdose.
The suspect in the drug bust, a 25-year-old, was sentenced to 6.5 years for multiple charges, reported WKBN, the local NBC affiliate. Among those charges? Assaulting an officer with fentanyl.
In classic hysteria cases, symptoms present as temporary paralysis, Blanchfield added: "People's limbs would lock up. They would start screaming, wailing — no apparent reason."
In modern-day terms, police officers may be experiencing a conversion disorder — when intense stress is converted into physical symptoms, Blanchfield explained. It's similar to a panic attack.
Blanchfield didn't think the officers were exaggerating or collapsing on purpose. He believed they were truly scared.
"That suffering is real," he said.
Policing is a stressful and dangerous job, so news stories and police reports about officers who are said to have overdosed during drug busts might have led to a contagion effect, in which certain behaviors or actions spread through a group.
"When your whole job is maintaining boundaries, but also those boundaries are unstable and full of contradictions, it's probably not surprising that people develop conversion disorders and contagion fears specifically, that they seize up or act out," Blanchfield said.
Confusing panic attacks with overdoses has real consequences
The Tulare County Sheriff's Office showed evidence seized after a traffic stop led officers to a major methamphetamine- and fentanyl-trafficking operation in Pixley, California, in January 2020.
Tulare County Sheriff's Office/AP
Police forces are part of a larger misinformation problem, harm-reduction experts say. News articles, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the CDC have all spread hyperbolic, unvetted, or false information about the risk of overdose from touching fentanyl.
A paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy last year said news articles containing misinformation about fentanyl were shared at least 450,000 times on Facebook between 2015 and 2019, potentially reaching upward of 70 million users. By comparison, posts correcting false information about fentanyl were shared 30,000 times.
Leah Hill, a behavioral-health fellow with the Baltimore City Health Department, displayed a sample of Narcan nasal spray on January 23, 2018.
Patrick Semansky/AP
Misinformation is a threat to both law-enforcement officers and people who use drugs, since the latter group may not be rescued during an overdose if responders or witnesses fear for their own lives.
Additionally, those who possess drugs may face harsher sentencing because of this confusion. In 2017, for example, an Ohio police officer told news outlets that he'd used his bare hand to brush grains of fentanyl off his uniform during a drug bust. An hour later, he said, he keeled over from an overdose.
The suspect in the drug bust, a 25-year-old, was sentenced to 6.5 years for multiple charges, reported WKBN, the local NBC affiliate. Among those charges? Assaulting an officer with fentanyl.
Absolutely. fukk whatever bytch ass nikka out there slanging that poison
This people are more worried about criminals than the overall community.
I mean that’s what it is
Gah damm u pathetic
I don't give a shyt what happens to people who sell fentanyl.
Respectfully.
You acting like you're showing some kind of solidarity with black people rooting for the bad guys. nikka sit the fukk down.
fukk them.
U always been a c00nI don't give a shyt what happens to people who sell fentanyl.
Respectfully.
You acting like you're showing some kind of solidarity with black people rooting for the bad guys. nikka sit the fukk down.
fukk them.
Wanna be cac
Imma just finally put u ignore
Field Marshall Bradley
Veteran
Whose overall community?
We never spoke like that. I'm not missing anyone special.U always been a c00n
Wanna be cac
Imma just finally put u ignore
Ol cover my ears lala I can't hear u anymore ass bytch.
Cops get better PR consultation than some fortune 500 companies
This is grade-a fabrication of bs charges to increase our budget and create faux outrage
While continuing the prison industrial complex.
Sickening what cops do and get away with.
This is grade-a fabrication of bs charges to increase our budget and create faux outrage
While continuing the prison industrial complex.
Sickening what cops do and get away with.
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For lying pigs, brehs.
Rembrandt
the artist
Just like people should get extra time for crack instead of cocaine.
Nope, what the fukk
And fent is coming from China mainly, even the cartels get theirs from China
Stupid to even equate the two and I wouldn't be surprised the majority getting popped for this shyt are white people considering the opioid epidemic is widely and mainly hitting white people/communities
Even if it's growing, it's mainly coming from pressed pills people don't know they're buying and we should all be against that. Michael K Williams didn't die because he knowingly shot up fent.
