California DA’s Office Used A Made-Up Story About A Dead Kid To Pitch Its Fentanyl Fantasies

There's not much that's more inadvertently hilarious than the efforts of law enforcement officials to convince the general public that simply being in the immediate area of fentanyl could result in instant death.

That's not how drugs work. Drugs need to be ingested. While some drugs can obviously be absorbed through the skin, it takes a lot more than just touching (alleged) fentanyl to result in the loss of life, much less a trip to the ER.

But cops at all levels continue to insist that being anywhere around fentanyl is rolling the dice with death. The perpetration of this hysteria has managed to trickle down to street level, resulting in (um) normal Americans regaling their Facebook friends about their brush with death following an encounter with an unknown powder.

The DEA should be the grown up in the room, but it has proven to be the most childish in recent years. It has not only perpetuated the myth that fentanyl can kill on contact, but it has pushed the ridiculous narrative that drug cartels are making multi-colored pills for the sole reason of marketing to children - the least-profitable market and the most likely to die from ingestion, permanently ending this business relationship.

Killing kids tho. That's the law enforcement pitch. Fentanyl's mere existence supposedly poses a deadly threat to children, more so than any other drug in history. While children are more likely to die from accidentally ingesting OTC medication or household cleaners, law enforcement officials continue to insist fentanyl is the most likely suspect in any child's death.

This narrative must be pushed at all costs, even at the expense of the truth. Brian Krans performs some truly excellent reporting for NPR affiliate KRCB, exposing a truly hideous lie being pushed by the office of Sonoma County (CA) District Attorney Carla Rodriguez.

The DA's office has produced a handful of PSA's designed to raise awareness about fentanyl and its potential to kill. On the DA's website, one such announcement tells the tragic tale of a life cut short:

Announcer: This is Lisa.

Lisa: She was a great kid. She loved horses. She wanted to play soccer

Announcer: and like many Sonoma County moms that afternoon she had taken her daughter to the playground.

Lisa goes on to spell out a parent's worst nightmare.

Lisa: We'd gone to the park that day and you know how kids are. She saw some white powder and touched it. That's all she did... All of a sudden, something just wasn't right. Her pupils look like little dots.

The audio piece is titled Lindsey's Story.'

Lisa: She then fell down and made this gurgling noise and then went limp.

Listeners are then directed to the website SOCO one pill can kill dot com.

Lisa: She was only six years old.

Announcer: This message is brought to you by the Sonoma County District Attorney's office.

All lil' Lisa (who makes Lil' Debbie look like a pile of puke) did was touch" the white powder. And then her pupils looked like lil' dots. Poor dead Lisa. What an unimaginable tragedy.

Oh, wait. It was a completely imaginable tragedy. Literally.

There's no evidence to suggest that any child has ever died by simply touching fentanyl, let alone suddenly at a playground in Sonoma County.

That's because, as any actual medical professional knows, fentanyl does not work that way. Accidentally touching it cannot cause an overdose. There has never been a confirmed reported case that says otherwise. And this case, presented as fact by the DA's office, didn't happen. And it has never happened in Sonoma County. According to the Sonoma County Coroner's Office, it has never examined a child (of any age) who has allegedly died from touching fentanyl.

The DA office's ad partner has since admitted it made the whole thing up.

The DA's office paid Amaturo $46,000 dollars for help with the campaign. That included the company producing several radio spots with some of the parents interviewed on KSRO, and running them on its nine stations for six weeks.

Steve DiNardo is Amaturo's VP of sales. He said Lindsey's Story' never aired on the radio, and admits it was fabricated.

We were trying to be creative," Amaturo said. We're trying to elicit emotion. I think the campaign did a very good job of accomplishing that."

Yes, that's the kind of thing liars like to say. It's not a lie. It's just creativity." And emails obtained from the DA's office show the DA was aware its ad partner was going to whip up a fake dead kid" story to push the office's fentanyl hysteria.

The sad thing is District Attorney Rodriguez simply doesn't care if she has to lie to make a point.

We asked the DA if she had any concerns about the fake story being alarmist.

I am not concerned about people being too alert about the dangers of fentanyl," Rodriguez said. Period. I am not."

Well, you should be concerned. You should be concerned that you have to lie to alert" people about the dangers of fentanyl. You should definitely be concerned that you not only delivered a fake dead kid story to listeners, but you made them stupider (and more paranoid) by falsely claiming simply touching fentanyl can result in an overdose. This is lies on top of lies and it doesn't do anything to make the public safer. All it does is clog up ERs with people who buy into this bullshit and treat any encounter with an unknown substance as an overdose-in-the-making.