"Lucky to be Alive": Sheriff's Deputy Rushed to Hospital After Accidental Fentanyl Exposure
KABC—A Los Angeles deputy officer is lucky to be alive after he was exposed to fentanyl during a traffic stop. Paramedics were called to the scene and he was rushed to USC Medical Center. He regained consciousness at the emergency room and is expected to make a full recovery.
Satire or not?
Lately I’ve been entertaining myself (and annoying subscribers) by writing parodies of accidental overdose exposure stories. The funnest part is that a size-able number of readers think the stories are real, and that I really bought a police department’s claims that one of their officers OD’d by sticking his fingers in a bowling bowl or touching an elevator button.
When I say it’s satire they’re chagrined and apologetic. But you know what? You can’t blame them, because the story I cited above is for real. The local news station had a helicopter at the scene and everything, and the reporter literally says, “The officer is lucky to be alive.”
Here, in America we’re not known for our intellectual prowess or respect for science or attachment to reality. But it’s truly astounding to me that no number of debunkings—including recently by Zach in the New York Times—kill this zombie.
It’s fun to dunk on police departments and local news—we all grew up with, “Live at 5! Can your lawn sprinklers kill your baby? KABC investigates!”— but just in this self-parody of a story, there are so many real-life negative repercussions.
You have EMTs being sent on a bullshit emergency, when they could be somewhere actually saving lives. All three people in the vehicle were arrested, despite our profound devotion to not criminalize addiction. In fact, one of the men, who appeared to actually be overdosing, was handcuffed to his hospital bed, according to KABC.
They air footage of him being taken out of the ambulance, for which they not doubt feel he should be grateful, but also, the air footage gets close enough to make him easily identifiable to family, friends, employers, parole officers and members of the community.
It’s the logic behind Faces of Meth: Once someone is deemed an addict they lose their rights and their humanity, their only societal utility as cautionary tales.
Meanwhile, the supernatural dangerousness of fentanyl—it’s one million times stronger than anything the world has ever seen!—remains a justification for continued criminalization of a public health crisis.
And drug policy and addiction experts point out over and over again, the biggest public health danger of stories like this is of first responders failing to intervene when a person is actually overdosing because they think fentanyl can kill them if the powder looks at them funny.