Why are cops the only ones who pass out from touching fentanyl?

Tony Pierce
Del Playa
Published in
3 min readDec 16, 2022
Florida police officer Courtney Bannick flat on her back after experiencing fentanyl she claims she merely touched.

I don’t mind when cops are wrong. But I do mind when cops are proven wrong and pretend all's good.

Yesterday, LAPD’s Deputy Chief tweeted out a Fox News story about an officer in Florida who claimed to have merely touched some fentanyl that was wrapped up in a dollar bill and after warning her partners what she had discovered, she passed out. After three shots of Narcan she was revived.

Here’s the problem: you cannot pass out after *touching* fentanyl.

We know this, in part, after a deputy in San Diego in July of 2021 also passed out after allegedly touching the deadly drug.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Deputy David Faiivae gets aid after being exposed to fentanyl last year.

Deputy David Faiivae’s claim was quickly debunked by doctors, the local paper was ridiculed for not reaching out to a medical professional as a source to the story, and the deputy fled out of the country on an extremely convienent vacation. Newspapers from the New York Times to the Sacramento Bee called BS.

The viral video the SD Sheriff Dept had posted on YouTube and Vimeo was quietly deleted and one would have thought a lesson had been learned.

Many assume Deputy Faiivae, just like the Florida officer, snorted the drug and were either too embarrassed or two f-ed up to admit it.

You see, there is a theory that cops sometimes lie.

And once the lie hits the media, it’s very difficult for some of them to walk it back. Especially when other law enforcement officials, like the LAPD’s Marc Reina, shine attention on it.

Once Reina tweeted about the dangers of touching fentanyl, he was quickly alerted on Twitter by a doctor that fentanyl doesn’t work that way.

And think about it, if it did, why wouldn’t addicts just touch it instead of ingesting it?

Later Twitter itself put a disclaimer on the officer’s tweet calling BS on it.

What did the Deputy Chief do after this note? He retweeted a half dozen fentanyl pieces and left his original tweet up despite being roundly ratioed.

“There are those who say this can’t happen,” Deputy Chief Marc Reina, tweeted yesterday. Over 1,500 said, “yup, no it can’t happen.”

Will the LAPD Chief Moore encourage him to delete the false tweet?

Don’t hold your breath.

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