LEOs and Fentanyl

Is It What We Think It Is?

I am sure most of you read the title and thought, “I know exactly what that is, that stuff is dangerous!” Now, you are not wrong, but let me expand on this thought. We have all been through the training talking about Narcan and how dangerous this stuff is. We have seen the picture of the amount of a lethal dose of fentanyl compared to a penny. This is accurate, but let me drop this bomb. There are zero documented cases of law enforcement officers overdosing on fentanyl. Zero.

Now, let me guess, you know a guy this happened to? You don’t need to tell me the story, because I have already heard it. He was searching a car or opened a package at the PD, there was a puff of white powder, he inhaled it without a mask or under his mask, maybe a little even got on his bare skin. Next thing you know, he is hyperventilating, sweaty, and he collapsed? 

Again, let me guess, Narcan/naloxone “brought him back!” After the officer was transported to the hospital they took his blood. What did the tox report show? Nothing? No fentanyl? No opioids? None? Really? “Well the Narcan took it out of his system!” No. No it did not. It does not work that way.

Now let me ask, have you seen an opioid overdose? Most of us have. What did you see? A relaxed respiratory system? Calm? Dry skin? Did they suddenly collapse? Or did they slowly stop breathing? What are the differences you noticed between the LEO’s “Over dose” and the intentional user’s “OD”?

How does this work? How are there such stark differences between the two cases? This most likely is a case of conversion disorder. The LEO thinks they know exactly what is going to happen, so their brain tricks them into thinking it is happening. The officers are most likely not doing this intentionally. This is the power of the mind.

The comeback is often, “well, if it wasn’t an opioid, Narcan wouldn’t have brought them back!” Au contraire. Have you ever had 4 mg of cold saline aerosolized up your nose? That would wake you up in the morning. And back to conversion disorder, if the psyche thinks that it received the cure, it may snap the officer out of the altered level of consciousness that they are experiencing. It is not simply a panic attack, what they are experiencing is real. Their brain is telling them they are dying. 

I first heard of this back in 2018 at a training at the FBI Center in South Milwaukee. They were discussing the recent incidents in the Fox Valley Area. In the year prior, a city officer with an area department experienced medical issues after an exposure. He received Narcan and recovered. His tox report came back with no opioids in his system. Around the same time a large PD in the Valley received an anonymous package in the mail. A Captain and someone from the office were the only two in the room when they opened it. Poof. White powder. They both suddenly collapsed. Extra precautions. Transported to a hospital. Blood draw. But what was on the tox report? Nothing.

Now, this all may sound a little snarky, but the point is, the stuff is not as dangerous as we have been told. If you know of any documented cases of LEO OD on fentanyl, please forward them to me. I am genuinely interested. This appears to be an incredibly large training scar left on an entire generation of law enforcement.

If this were the case, and this stuff was killing people by landing on their skin, we would constantly hear of dealers and users with accidental/surprise ODs. Now, I have been to a handful of OD calls and everyone that I have seen, has been an intentional user. If you want to go down the rabbit hole on this, I won’t throw the numbers and the medical lingo at you, but I will share some of my sources. One being a surgeon friend, who I won’t pass on his contact info. The other being the FBI training I mentioned, the class was called “Weapons of Mass Destruction Response”. And the last one and most shareable is from Dr. Mike Simpson. He hosts the Mind of the Warrior Podcast and episode #91 explores this in much greater detail than I will write about. If you have questions, I would encourage you to listen to this episode and read the sources that he cites.