Medical experts dispute a viral video that shows a rookie cop suffering seizures after contact exposure to fentanyl.
Police bodycam footage captured on July 3 shows San Diego County Deputy David Faiivae testing a white powdery substance believed to be fentanyl.
Corporal Scott Crane warns Faiivae to be careful while handling the substance.
“That’s stuff’s no joke, dude. That’s super dangerous,” Crane said.
Moments later, Faiivae seemed to experience convulsions and collapsed on the ground.
But medical experts disputed the claim that Faiivae overdosed on contact exposure to fentanyl.
“You cannot overdose just by touching fentanyl or another opioid and you cannot overdose just by being around it,” Dr Ryan Marino told Reuters.
“It will not get into the air and cause anyone to overdose,” said Marino, Medical Director of Toxicology & Addiction at University Hospitals, Cleveland.
“You cannot overdose through accidental contact. People do overdose accidentally, but it is people who are using drugs and either not expecting fentanyl or carfentanil, or something like that, or people who get an unknown dose because they are buying drugs from the street, so overdose that way.”
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Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, told the Associated Press the viral video “simply creates more fear and irrational panic that fuels further punitive responses to the overdose crisis, instead of the public health approach we need.”
And Leo Beletsky, a professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, told KGTV:
“There’s zero chance that it was caused by fentanyl exposure, in this case. You would need to be in a room where lots of powder was constantly in the air for hours in order to start ingesting enough of it to experience these symptoms.”
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore clarified that he made the determination that Faiivae overdosed, not a medical doctor.
“I saw the video. Everybody that saw the video saw him seize up, go down, fall on his head,” Gore told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“The drugs tested for fentanyl. It was classic signs of fentanyl overdose – that’s why we called it that. If we were misinformed, so be it. We are trying to correct [it].”
