I can see how a lab might have decent PPE for the workers, but smugglers? Local dealers? Based on what I see in the media a few crumbs of fent will kill you and it can be absorbed via skin contact.
It seems like one small mistake would create a deadly spill that could easily kill you right then or at any point in the future.
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Skin contact takes hours to absorb. You don’t overdose by handling it. Cops pretend you do because they are really dumb.
Very simple answer is Because a few crumbs won’t actually kill you.
It can’t be absorbed by skin, though cops that do the drugs they seize on the side may say otherwise. Dealers will have machinery to vacuum seal, and transport it in specially designed bags.
While there’s probably plenty of idiot drug dealers that don’t work like it’s a lab and will die or cross contaminate (which is where most “laced” deaths come from unless it’s heroin or similar), up the food chain it’s treated appropriately.
No experience here but if you’re dealing with drugs for a living, I’d 100% assume anyone that isn’t a street level dealer understands fentanyl can kill them, their customers, and can afford the pretty inexpensive equipment to deal with it appropriately.
Fentanyl can absorb through the skin but it takes time and the patches used are specifically designed for transdermal absorption.
https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/can-fentanyl-be-absorbed-through-your-skin/2022/10
There’s a lay explanation of what you asked.
Quite frankly if you’d ever seen an actual opiate overdose, you’d immediately see it looks nothing like the cops in the videos you’ve seen. There’s no seizing and rolling around on the floor. Not much talking. No real drama at all actually. It’s like the person is there one minute, albeit in an impaired fashion, and gone the next.
It’s easy to manufacture in larger batches due to its small concentration, either robotically or using protective gear.
Smugglers are probably transporting liquid vials of the stuff (in glass, safe to generally handle it).
Dealers, idk, they may wear ppe as they’re lacing it into whatever they’re selling, but if they fk up the concentration the person taking their med dies.
It’s not “deadly” per se, just potent and easy to overdose, issues like this don’t happen in hospitals because there are multiple checkpoints for it, and it’s in known concentrations so the effect is pinpoint.
A lot of the fear-mongering around the deadliness of fentanyl is patently not true and over overblown for sensationalism when reported on by the news. Being exposed to a ‘few crumbs’ in the air or via contact with the skin will not make you drop dead. There is no evidence that police reports of officers needing to be hospitalized for overdose from mere exposure are unsubstantiated. The compound is actually fairly stable and is consistently used in hospitals routinely without problems to doctors, nurses, aides, or patients.
Despite what police would like you to believe Fentanyl cannot be absorbed through momentary exposure. You need constant and prolonged exposure (like being in a lab) for that to be a concern.
Cops and media are lying. It won’t kill you if you touch it, but at this point it’s become a point of mass paranoia in law enforcement. Cop touches it, remembers what he heard about it killing on contact, has a panic attack. Him and the force are too embarrassed to admit that the whole thing is a nothingburger, so they keep repeating the lie. Media loves a good panic and parrots the bullshit to the masses. Rinse and repeat.
Fentanyl isn’t radiation. It’s a misconception that it can be absorbed through skin contact. Smugglers and dealers survive by simply not dipping into and overdosing on their own product. It’s deadly because it’s very easy to overdose by accident, especially if someone is unaware that the drug they’re using includes fentanyl.
Fentanyl is deadly on ingestion (snorting, smoking, injection) as it can slow/stop your breathing in addition to its other effects. Handling it isn’t deadly.
Fentanyl cannot be adsorbed through the skin. This is a myth that combines fear of the drug and the fact that a medical version of the drug can be made as a patch. But the Fentanyl being mixed with cocaine and heroin CANNOT be absorbed through the skin.
Pure drugs are typically mixed with other things so drug dealers can make more money. If a dealer in the US buys 1 kilogram of pure cocaine from Colombia, they can mix it with 1 kilo of baby powder and now they have 2 kilos worth of stuff to sell.
Fentanyl is attractive for this, because it is SO POWERFUL in such small quantities. So you only need a little bit of it to mix with A LOT of mixer to have a lot of drugs to sell that still get people high. As you pointed out, drug dealers make mistakes. And these means the drugs have uneven dosing which is why people die from it.
Lethal amount of fentanyl is about 2 milligrams, which is 5-7 grains of salt. Heroin’s lethal amount is about 20 times greater. Cocaine’s lethal dose is about 40 times greater.
Source: https://health.ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/can-fentanyl-be-absorbed-through-your-skin/2022/10
Fentanyl can technically be absorbed thru skin but not particularly well. The media is extremely sensationalist about fentanyl. At the production level protective equipment will be used, and from there it will be packaged for bulk transport. At some points in the supply chain there may be exposure, but not so much as to be that big of a risk. But even if it is, illegal drug production and smuggling aren’t trades that particularly care about a few deaths.
Cops are lying pussies. The media has a huge impact on our understanding of things. There have been zero confirmed overdoses from first responders touching it. It’s copaganda.
Fentanyl is not readily absorbed through the skin, here’s what happens:
Cops have been told it is due to some false information,
Cops get exposed to it,
Cops have panic attacks, think those panic attacks are them overdosing,
Cops seek medical treatment, someone on the force holds a presser saying that one of their officers was hospitalized for just casual exposure to fentanyl.
Media reports this uncritically (not waiting or bothering to find out if there was ever a positive tox screen,) cops see this and believe it. We are now at step 1 again.
Because the idea that you fall over and die just from touching it is bullshit put out by law enforcement. They literally put in skin patches for pain relief.
Fentanyl is also a legit pain medication in small doses. Source: my nurse when I was suffering from pancreatitus
>Based on what I see in the media a few crumbs of fent will kill
You are discovering how propaganda works. In this case, propaganda to keep drugs criminalized.
A few crumbs on debt won’t kill you on skin contact. That’s it – that premise is wrong. When people use fentanyl recreationally (or medically) it’s diluted in something else you you (generally) don’t take a lethal dose.
Because they aren’t injecting it into their veins or ingesting it. Contrary to numerous claims of police departments, you can’t absorb that much fentanyl through skin contact or inhaling dust. Even if you covered your entire body with fentanyl patches, it could take hours to OD. And those are formulated to absorb a lot into your skin fat more effectively than if you simply touched it.
It also gets cut fairly quickly so the kilo of fentanyl that can be made into millions of pills becomes millions of pills fairly quickly.
I hope that in the gigantic chorus of “it can’t get through your skin” that you have received, you’ve managed to pick up that yes, you’re right, a few crumbs–actually something smaller than one crumb, just 2 mg can kill you, if it gets in your eye or your mouth.
Along with proper packaging and protective equipment, it’s important to note that 2 mg not only won’t kill a regular user, they won’t even feel it. Tolerance for fentanyl is quickly acquired and grows gigantic compared with what would be a lethal dose for a non-user quickly. I forget the exact numbers but it’s I believe 10 times the difference of that ratio for heroin, and heroin often kills because of miscalculations based on loss of tolerance. This makes fentanyl astoundingly dangerous.
China’s getting revenge on western society for the 100 years humiliation so they have spent decades quietly establishing the infrastructure to support drug cartels in almost every town, and basically its a secret opium wars part 3
The established network actually is so formidable that to even mention it means going to hell because today’s information structure requires not only an endless supply of reputable sources and receipts but to even suggest this would be an invitation for mental health awareness as the groups collectively deny and admonish anyone who would even suggest that chinese influence gangs run the world using the dark figure of crime but luckily for anyone reading i’m in such a bad mood i don’t even care what happens world war III should officially begin by end of april
Cya!
Because the cops are lying about touching it and dying, because cops lie.