BATTLING MISINFORMATION AGAIN: VIRAL FENTANYL VIDEO EDITION.

A police department released a video they claim is body cam footage of an officer "passing out and almost overdosing after just touching fentanyl."

Medical experts DO NOT believe the video is real, mostly because Fentanyl literally does not work that way.

If it did, doctors and nurses would be dropping all over the place since it's a pretty commonly delivered opioid. People touching their prescriptions would be passed out everywhere.

Just touching fentanyl doesn't do anything the same way just touching a Viagra doesn't give you an erection or just touching a Tylenol doesn't fix your headache.

He would have to ingest it to pass out. A lot of it.

Airborne fentanyl would take much longer to produce a reaction and he would need to be breathing ONLY that for quite a while.

Liquid fentanyl was not involved, he didn't drink anything in the video.

Are these experts saying the department is purposefully faking???

No, though they did explain some reasons a department might have to do that.

Are they saying nothing happened to the officer and he is totally making it up and not even a good actor???

No, but quite a few experts have pointed out that the faint resembles the kind of fainting they see in extreme anxiety, seizure disorders, and syncope - and that it looks nothing like what fentanyl overdoses look like.

It's more likely the officer freaked himself out and fainted from the panic/anxiety than it is that he passed out from touching anything.
ESPECIALLY given that the officer with him had literally just told him fentanyl was super dangerous and no joke.

Are experts saying this is all staged as further disinformation in the wild failure we call the "war on drugs"???

No, at least not on purpose. It's possible the department really believes that is what happened - though that's disheartening because police officers are supposed to be about evidence and facts.

They should have gotten that evidence and those facts before releasing this video and blaming a drug lots of people rely on - especially when pretty much every medical expert is looking at the video going "nope. this is not what you're claiming it is."

Do experts believe the video will harm people?

Yes.

How many freaked out and uninformed people are going to watch the video and believe it for what the police department said?

How many of those people have a loved one with a long term disability, chronic pain condition, or end of life care who use fentanyl to get through the day?

And how many are going to try to get that loved one off that med/deny them that med because they believed it? The only person who suffers in that case is the patient.

Anyway long story short - video is questionable AF.

This is not medically accurate for what the department is claiming.

Officer is conveniently out of the country and unavailable or something and all he will say is he didn't feel right and then things went black.