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Fentanyl made a lot of headlines during the opioid crisis. This drug is stronger than heroin, cocaine, and meth, and causes more deaths than all three! Moreover, it’s a major threat to Black America.
It’s definitely something to worry about, but let’s make sure we get the information about it right.
There have been multiple accounts of police reportedly “overdosing” from simply from touching the drug, but this is NOT true.
The Detroit Free Press reported that “toxicologists say the stories… are wrong - and that they're creating unnecessary panic.” One toxicologist asked why anyone would bother injecting it if they could get high just from touching it!
The police and anyone else spreading harmful misinformation should stop. We can better fight the issues this drug is creating by understanding addiction - a problem that is becoming an increasingly major obstacle as it relates to Black people!
Analysis from the Center For Disease Control as reported by the Washington Post found “the death rate among African Americans from fentanyl-involved drug overdoses rose 141 percent each year, on average, from 2011 to 2016.”
This is not just an issue affecting others. It’s harming us at increasingly high rates, too.
Drug crises require us to be careful about what information we repeat so that we don’t further stigmatize people battling addiction. After all, this is a public HEALTH crisis - and Black America has been down this road with drug epidemics before.