What is even going on with cop 'fentanyl exposure' stories at this point?

Journalism is so gutted the same zombie story gets blasted out every time a cop has a panic attack.

Imagine if you could get high from a drug that floated into your system on the wind like fairy dust? This, apparently, happened to a Florida cop who accidentally grazed a dollar bill and instantly suffered an opioid overdose. “Florida cop treated for overdose after exposure to fentanyl during traffic stop” The New York Post proclaimed yesterday.

The officer allegedly touched a dollar bill with a plastic glove and then the wind blew a trace of fentanyl into her face. She began to experience shortness of breath and called colleagues for help.

That is not an opioid overdose, that is a panic attack triggered by the bullshit story that circulates nearly weekly of cops (and only cops!) overdosing from accidental exposure to fentanyl.

If I were this cop, I’d be pissed that in response to my panic attack they shot me up with Narcan instead of giving me anti-anxiety medication. I bet anything that’s what the actual real paramedics did.

Why are these stories still cropping up nearly weekly? Every time another one turns up, an army of drug policy and health experts take to Twitter to debunk it. I understand that there are different media and knowledge ecosystems. I also think that most reporters know how to use Google and Twitter for prelim research and so have surely come up against the barrage of debunkings.

So, either “reporters” haven’t heard of Google or Twitter or the local press and tabloids are knowingly misleading readers.

Let’s take a closer look at the Post story:

A Florida police officer was given three doses of Narcan after she was exposed to fentanyl and reportedly overdosed during a traffic stop Tuesday.

Shocking video shows the moment Tavares Officer Courtney Bannick was administered the opioid overdose-reversing drug as she lay motionless on the side of a road just after midnight.

Bannick found narcotics — which police believe contained the deadly drug — in a rolled-up dollar bill inside the vehicle she and the other officers pulled over, according to local reports.

Shortly after, she began struggling to breathe.

Look at these shady bastards. Every sentence is meticulously crafted to *technically* be true. She was treated for a fentanyl overdose. The video is, sort of, shocking, in that she looks like a crazy woman in a seance, yet has state-sanctioned authority to arrest or kill people. Police do, possibly, “believe” the vehicle contained fentanyl in a dollar-bill.