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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> 10 pounds of fentanyl is enough to lethally overdose about 2 million people.

I'm not sure what the point of this comment is. Fentanyl is only dangerous if ingested; incidental contact is harmless.

That shipment was, in all likelihood, intended for eventual distribution to opiate users, who have a higher tolerance than the general population. Making a comparison of how that would affect a person who has no tolerance is misleading fearmongering, when there was no indication that any person in this story was going to accidentally ingest the substance.

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> Fentanyl is only dangerous if ingested; incidental contact is harmless.

Bullshit. Your hand touches something that had fentanyl powder on it, your finger goes up your nose or in your mouth (most people in the world do this), then what?? Oh, nothing?

>Making a comparison of how that would affect a person who has no tolerance is misleading fearmongering, when there was no indication that any person in this story was going to accidentally ingest the substance.

I guess let's just ignore the problem, OP was being silly, there's nothing wrong here?? Is that really your line of thinking? What if the elderly person decided to open up one of the powder packages to see what kind of powder was in it, like if it had a smell or something, maybe it's chalk, maybe it's salt - they don't know. In that case they very likely would be dead. Inhaling it if grandpa did cut open one of the packages would likely kill anyone that entered the room.

I've never seen anyone be so cavalier about 10 pounds of fentanyl before.

> I've never seen anyone be so cavalier about 10 pounds of fentanyl before.

Fentanyl is deadly in microgram doses, for it makes people stop breezing. Russians weaponized fentanyl into a gas and used it to disable Chechen terrorists in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 [0]. It was so effective that besides the terrorists some hostages died before an antidote could be administered.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

to be fair that was carfentanyl aka spicy fentanyl

> Russians weaponized fentanyl into a gas and used it to disable Chechen terrorists in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002 [0]. It was so effective that besides the terrorists some hostages died before an antidote could be administered.

This is somewhere between myth and outright fiction.

There is zero evidence that fentanyl or its derivatives were responsible for any deaths. The claim that fentanyl was responsible is based on a single study which claimed to find fentanyl on one sample of clothing and in the urine of two survivors ten years after the incident happened, something which has & far more plausible explanations.

The tinfoil hat is too tight. Loosen it a bit.

I don't think they're saying that receiving and touching the box was a danger to the recipient. I think they're just expressing that 10 pounds is a lot and this is not a single casual user just buying enough for themselves and their friends.

There are plenty of stories of the wind accidentally blowing illegal substances into people’s faces…

Based on the death rates, it seems like no one really has a higher “tolerance”. Even fetanyl users can’t handle fetanyl…

> There are plenty of stories

Yeah, there are lots of bullshit stories avout fentanyl that are completely implausible given the actual effects of fentanyl, and the vast majority of them are direct deliberate police political propaganda, and most of the rest are paranoid misinterpretations of events from people (mostly themselves street cops) whose understanding of the universe is shaped by being immersed in deliberate police propaganda.

Uhh sure. What are the actual effects? Have you tried it?

I’m all for calling a pig a pig. Let me know.

Are you saying that fetanyl is no more deadly than heroin?

(Also, if anything, the whole “illegal substance flying in a person’s face” thing comes from comedy movies… Is this what you’re saying is untrue?)

Yeah they’re talking about cops that got some fentanyl on their hand and thought they were having an overdose when really it was just a panic attack. I’ve read a couple of news articles where something along those lines happened.

Edit: one example here https://wpdh.com/city-of-poughkeepsie-cop-collapses-after-fe...

> There are plenty of stories of the wind accidentally blowing illegal substances into people’s faces…

Yes, there are lots of urban legends! That doesn't make them true, especially when they fly in the face of basic science and can be disproven with even a back of the envelope calculation.

What are the effects? What’s the science? What are the calculations you’re speaking of lol? If they’re so basic and can be done on the back of an envelope, can you provide them right now?

Are you saying that fetanyl is no more deadly than heroin?

Or are you just saying that the “wind blows substance in face” is only a thing seen in movies?

Instead of trying to fact-check the commenters replying to you, maybe instead you can provide any sources/documentation to these stories of "wind blows substance in face" ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWxd8wNbldA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_pRi37yLBQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd76HxqCPf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff3IZu_m66Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gA61UowVHk

These cops would disagree.

> These cops would disagree.

Hacker News is the last place I would expect people to blindly accept police press releases at face value, particularly when they fly in the face of basic science.

Your first link shows a guy administering Narcan to a man who's standing up, fully conscious, with his eyes open. Even if you've never seen an overdose in your life, that should set off some alarm bells.

These stories are evergreen and predictable. They make for good viral clickbait content, despite the fact that they never hold up. Every time, the story is the same: they run a test afterwards, and 90% of the time it turns out that there's no fentanyl in their system. The other 10% of the time, it turns out that the cop saw an opportunity to take a hit off the drugs they just seized (oftentimes non-opiate), and that resulted in an overdose.

For future reference, a good hint that these stories aren't portraying what they claim to be is that they almost never show people with symptoms consistent with fentanyl overdose (and typically with symptoms consistent of a panic attack).

We're all prone to missing the obvious when it agrees with our ideological predispositions.

The image of the police has become rather ideological of late, e.g. the "defund the police" movement and a counter pro-police movement. Both movements are tied in to other ideological positions, and I've seen quite a lot of HN posts on positions that are associated with pro-police stances (e.g. on climate change, COVID vaccines, etc).

So it doesn't surprise me to see HN readers accepting police press releases at face value. HN may have a reputation for a libertarian ethos, but libertarianism often supports law enforcement. It would be nice if that would get more skepticism when the press releases are such transparent propaganda, but as I said, we're all prone to swallowing propaganda that feels right.

These have been fully debunked. They're panic attacks. The cops are having genuine reactions, but not from the drug.

also it's unlikely to be pure and would likely be split down into a great many individual doses.

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