We media types generally love to write scary stories about all the terrifying stuff coming to kill you and your kids. Except, by now you've learned to see through it: No, Dungeons & Dragons wasn't really turning kids into suicidal satanists. No, sadists weren't sticking razor blades into apples meant for bobbing. And no, smoking marijuana wasn't nearly as dangerous as those anti-drug campaigns made it sound.
Washington state has a standing order that anyone can get Narcan at the pharmacy to carry around with them in case they encounter someone who needs the lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drug.
DrugPreventionSpokane.org and StopOverdose.org provide information and links to many resources.
Frontier Behavioral Health's 24/7 crisis line (including for substance use): 877-266-1818
But that's why the biggest subject of sensationalism this Halloween — the synthetic opioid fentanyl — is so tricky. There really are a lot of legitimate reasons to be worried about how many people are dying due to fentanyl.
So we're here to try to separate the truly horrifying facts from the hoaxes and the iffy claims in between that are just plain hinky.
ADDICTS ARE TRYING TO SABOTAGE YOUR KIDS' HALLOWEEN CANDY
Your family's Halloween candy is not going to see colorful fentanyl slipped into it. First, let's be logical: Drug addicts and dealers aren't going to waste valuable drugs just for the thrill of poisoning children, like some kind of sadistic holiday-themed Batman villain. The federal Drug Enforcement Administration itself has told media outlets that it hasn't seen any indications of this kind of Halloween candy sabotage happening — it's just the latest version of the candy tampering urban legends that go back over six decades.
DRUG ADDICTS ARE TARGETING KIDS BY TURNING FENTANYL PILLS RAINBOW COLORS
OK, so there is a grain of truth to this. Brightly colored "rainbow" fentanyl pills are now in Washington, with the first Spokane-area cases making their way to the Washington State Patrol's crime lab division in September. With cops finding fentanyl in a variety of colors, the DEA speculated in an August news release that the reasoning could be to make it look like "candy" or appeal to young people. But a lot of drug experts were extremely skeptical that targeting children with pretty colors was the motivation here, pointing out to reporters at outlets like Rolling Stone that there are other well-established reasons why cartels would churn out pills with sidewalk-chalk hues. First, it's a way to make their product stand out from that of others. Second, using color is a way to imitate the branding of other pharmaceutical pills.
According to the state patrol, the more colorful pills follow the same composition and appearance of the most common blue M30-labeled fentanyl pills that mimic oxycodone. The state patrol's investigative assistance division says the reason we're seeing more colors is open to speculation.
"It may be to make it more appealing to younger people, and it may be a 'branding' effort to distinguish one's product from others," state patrol spokesperson Chris Loftis said by email. "Regardless of the motivation, there are concerns the colored appearance will be more attractive to young persons or a child may mistakenly ingest it because it appears to look like candy."
All the more reason to not leave your fentanyl out where kids can find it.
Importantly, talking to children about the dangers of buying or taking pills, whether obtained via social media or from a friend, could help young people avoid accidentally ingesting fentanyl when they think they're getting something else.
MERE CRUMBS OF FENTANYL CAN KILL YOU
If ingested, just a few milligrams of pure fentanyl are enough for most people to overdose and possibly die from. The toxicity of fentanyl, however, can vary dramatically depending both on how much tolerance a user has and how pure the street fentanyl is. On top of that, many fentanyl users are smoking pieces of pills, which can reduce the potency.
EVEN TOUCHING FENTANYL CAN MAKE YOU OVERDOSE
This myth is widely believed and shared by police, even as public health officials and doctors have tried to convince them they're wrong.
While tiny amounts of fentanyl can be deadly, simply touching it won't give you an overdose. Your skin – meant to protect you from nasty germs and dirt – is, by design, bad at absorbing things like the powders or pills that illegal dealers make and sell. And fentanyl's not like LSD, which can be absorbed by touching a strip and then touching the mucus membranes in your nose.
However, you can absorb fentanyl that's specifically made for hospitals in the form of patches — but you do so slowly.
So does that mean that all these cops are straight up lying — going so far as to actually fake video footage of police officers falling to the ground, hyperventilating and even getting Narcan doses after simply touching fentanyl? Not at all.
The mind is a phenomenally powerful thing. Fear, as one science-fiction Halloween costume said, is the mind-killer. Some officers have had actual adverse symptoms after touching suspected fentanyl, but medical professionals speculate that these are more likely psychological reactions such as panic attacks. It's worth noting that an actual fentanyl overdose would slow your breathing and make it shallow. Think of this myth like Freddy Krueger — the fear itself really can hurt you. And not just you. The unwarranted fear could cause first responders to needlessly hesitate to help someone who is overdosing.
FENTANYL HAS CAUSED A DRAMATIC INCREASE IN FATAL OVERDOSES
Fentanyl can be a powerful legal drug when prescribed and used under medical supervision for intense temporary pain. It only started to creep onto the illegal market several years ago, but by 2021, the spike in overdose deaths from fentanyl was astronomical.
Washington state saw a 66 percent increase in all overdose deaths from 2019 to 2021, and more than half of overdose deaths last year were due to fentanyl, according to the state Department of Health.
Spokane County saw fatal overdoses involving any drug nearly triple from 2019 to 2021, according to medical examiner data. Fentanyl overdoses went from playing a role in 11 Spokane-area deaths in 2019 to causing 108 in 2021. Meth-involved overdose deaths also doubled during that time frame.
NARCAN WON'T WORK ON FENTANYL OVERDOSES
Some people have the misconception that fentanyl is resistant to naloxone, better known by the brand name Narcan. To the contrary, Narcan can save someone having a fentanyl overdose. As with other opioids, multiple doses of the overdose-reversing drug may be necessary, and unfortunately, not everyone can be saved.
FENTANYL CAN IMITATE — AND BE LACED INTO — OTHER ILLEGAL DRUGS
Fentanyl's so cheap, and so potent, that some dealers dress it up as other drugs. One Spokane mother, Molly Cain, has publicly stated that her 23-year-old son, Carson, bought what he thought was Xanax on Snapchat, only to fatally overdose when it turned out to be fentanyl. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal reported that fentanyl, which can appear as a white powder when crushed up, was frequently sprinkled into cocaine — over 80 percent of cocaine-related deaths in 2020 in New York City also showed the presence of fentanyl.
QUITTING COLD TURKEY IS THE BEST WAY TO GET OUT OF OPIOID ADDICTION
Fentanyl is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and literally changes your brain chemistry over time. Suddenly quitting won't immediately rewire your brain's desire for the immense amount of endorphins the drug makes it crave. Public health research has shown that for many people, medication-assisted treatment has proven more successful than detox/abstinence-focused treatment. Medication-assisted treatment transitions people to opioid alternatives that allow them to function more normally and escape a cycle where they're stuck seeking the next high.
FENTANYL IS FLOODING ACROSS THE SOUTHERN BORDER
A lot of fentanyl appears to be coming from Mexico, especially as cartels have invested in pill mills, where the drug is mixed and pressed into pill form, according to the DEA. In the past year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized over 700 pounds of fentanyl — and remember, this is incredibly potent stuff. In some cases, the precursor ingredients for fentanyl are first making their way to Mexico, the U.S. and Canada from China and other parts of Asia. The Washington State Patrol is not aware of fentanyl coming into the state from Canada. ♦
