Maybe I just missed this report, but it caught me by surprise. The Mercury News:
… a colleague told Green he had something on his shirt.
Green, without thinking, brushed it off with his bare hand.
Within minutes, he fell to the floor.
“I started talking weird. I slowly felt my body shutting down. I could hear them talking, but I couldn’t respond,” Green told Morning Journal. “I was in total shock. ‘No way I’m overdosing,’ I thought.”
Paramedics were already at the station tending to Justin Buckle, 25, the driver of the car, and diverted their attention to Green. They gave him one dose of Narcan, an FDA-approved nasal spray version of a lifesaving medication called naloxone that can reverse the lethal effects of an opioid overdose.
Green was transferred to East Liverpool City Hospital and given three additional doses of Narcan, East Liverpool Police Capt. Patrick Wright told TV station WKBN.
The reason? The shrek on his collar was fentanyl, the same drug blamed for Prince’s death. Just a few grains was a terminal dose for the officer, to be accurate; only fast action saved his life.
Which focuses the mind on the combination of potency, its undeniable danger to casual brushes, with its use as a way to enhance the effect of heroin for high-seekers. It brings to mind the question of whether it makes sense to make those drugs illegal; the entire failed War on Drugs, which may be reiterated under current Attorney General Sessions, is once again brought into the stark light of reality and made questionable.
I think I’d be in favor of drug dens, wherein you enter, order & take your drugs, and cannot leave until a doctor certifies you fit to conduct normal business once again. Would there be deaths in the den? Sure. But is it right to endanger police just because someone wants an illegal high?
