Media Reports of Unintentional Opioid Exposure of Public Safety First Responders in North America

Herman, Paul Alexander; Brenner, Daniel S.; Dandorf, Stewart; Kemp, Stephanie; Kroll, Breann; Trebach, Joshua; Hsieh, Yu Hsiang; Stolbach, Andrew

doi:10.1007/s13181-020-00762-y

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The misinformation may further aggravate stress and burnout among police by placing an extraordinary but unfounded mental strain on police officers, perpetuating the belief that they can quickly die from touching or breathing a substance police routinely encounter. Indeed, many of the reported fentanyl exposure incidents among police share the symptoms of a panic attack rather than an opioid; overdose, and no incidents to our knowledge have been confirmed as overdoses by exposure (Herman et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl

et al. 2021

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Misinformation about overdose risk from accidentally inhaling or touching fentanyl is widespread among police in the United States. This may aggravate already elevated burdens of officer stress and burnout, while chilling lifesaving overdose response. Police education has shown promise in reducing false beliefs about fentanyl. To better understand the potential of training interventions in correcting officer knowledge, we administered a 10-min online training with corrective messaging about occupational overdose risk from fentanyl contact to 204 police officers in Indiana. Overall, 129 officers (63%) completed baseline survey and 69 (34%) completed follow-up instrument. Using a 6-point Likert scale, we documented assent with the statement: “First responders who encounter fentanyl are at great risk of overdose by touching it or inhaling it.” At baseline, 79.8% expressed agreement, while 20.2% disagreed. At follow-up, 39.1% agreed, while 60.9% disagreed (p < .001). Baseline responses varied in that those officers without a college degree and those on patrol were more likely to report false beliefs. A brief online training intervention holds promise for correcting false beliefs about the risk of fentanyl overdose under circumstances commonly encountered by police.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl

et al. 2021

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“…According to a statement from the American College of Medical Toxicology and the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, overdose resulting from incidental skin contact with fentanyl or any other synthetic opioid is practically impossible (Moss et al, 2017). Further, a systematic review conducted in 2020 found that no single report of an officer overdosing in the field could be reasonably confirmed (Herman et al, 2020). In keeping with my experience in D.C., most case reports available list symptoms congruent with severe panic attacks, not opioid toxicity (Attaway et al, 2021).…”

Section: Collective Seeing From Nowhere and From Everywherementioning

confidence: 99%

Auras of Detection: Power and Knowledge in Drug Prohibition

Carroll

2021

Contemporary Drug Problems

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Drug checking is an evidence-based strategy for overdose prevention that continues to operate (where it operates) in a legal “gray zone” due to the legal classification of some drug checking tools as drug paraphernalia—the purview of law enforcement, not public health. This article takes the emergence of fentanyl in the U.S. drug supply as a starting point for examining two closely related questions about drug checking and drug market expertise. First, how is the epistemic authority of law enforcement over the material realities of the drug market produced? Second, in the context of that authority, what are the socio-political implications of technologically advanced drug checking instruments in the hands of people who use drugs? The expertise that people who use drugs maintain about the nature of illicit drug market and how to navigate the illicit drug supply has long been discounted as untrustworthy, irrational, or otherwise invalid. Yet, increased access to drug checking tools has the potential to afford the knowledge produced by people who use drugs a technological validity it has never before enjoyed. In this article, I engage with theories of knowledge production and ontological standpoint from the field of science, technology, and society studies to examine how law enforcement produces and maintains epistemic authority over the illicit drug market and to explore how drug checking technologies enable new forms of knowledge production. I argue that drug checking be viewed as a form of social resistance against law enforcement’s epistemological authority and as a refuge against the harms produced by drug criminalization.

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“…News stories of police succumbing to opioid overdose via passive fentanyl exposure began going viral in 2017 when an Ohio officer was reported to have brushed fentanyl powder from his uniform and lost consciousness before being revived with Narcan by another officer. Although transdermal toxicity is not medically possible (Herman et al, 2020), such reports distinguish the fentanyl used by medical professionals to treat pain from the 'illicit' fentanyl found in street heroin (Kennedy and Coehlo, 2019). Following the incident, the American College of Medical Toxicology (2017) issued a public statement clarifying: 'it is very unlikely that small, unintentional skin exposures to tablets or powder would cause significant opioid toxicity, and if toxicity were to occur it would not develop rapidly, allowing time for removal'.…”

Section: Narcan As Image Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narcan as biomedical panic: The war on overdose and the harms of harm reduction

Kavanaugh¹

2020

Theoretical Criminology

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As the opioid overdose crisis in the US persists, governments have coordinated with drug companies to propagate the overdose reversal drug naloxone (Narcan) as a ‘kinder/gentler’ state response, deriving from a supposedly progressive harm reduction ethos. Drawing on Derrida’s deconstruction of pharmakon, I show how Narcan is rendered paradoxical and terminal, diverting attention from the structural antecedents of opioid addiction and resources for drug treatment while reproducing corporeal suffering in those revived. I further highlight how Narcan is positioned in a wider array of regressive governing practices that legitimate the state’s punitive drug war and demonization of drug users. Narcan thus provides a useful opening between the state and contemporary biomedicine to theorize how harm reduction and public health unfurl in insidious and corrosive ways.

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Media Reports of Unintentional Opioid Exposure of Public Safety First Responders in North America

Cited by 11 publications

References 6 publications

Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl

Can touch this: training to correct police officer beliefs about overdose from incidental contact with fentanyl

Auras of Detection: Power and Knowledge in Drug Prohibition

Narcan as biomedical panic: The war on overdose and the harms of harm reduction

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