Cops Are Portraying Themselves as Victims of Their Own Drug War

When we think of the people who’ve been harmed the most by the war on drugs, Black and Indigenous people, as well as those who are low-income, or live in rural communities, come to mind.

But ironically it’s cops, the primary foot soldiers of prohibition, who are often painted as victims of the drug war’s worst consequences, allowing them to siphon off resources earmarked for people addicted to opioids and call for tougher punishments for the people who “expose” them to fentanyl during the course of their investigations. 

Take for example a pair of bills in Florida’s state legislature that would make it a second-degree felony to expose a first responder to drugs if the exposure results in overdose or serious injury. The bills, which have passed first readings, define exposure as ingestion, inhalation, needlestick injury, or absorption through skin or mucus. They define an overdose or serious bodily injury as “drug toxicity or a physical condition that creates a substantial risk of death or substantial loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.” Notably, the bills don’t specify that a drug test on the exposed officer would be required to file charges. 

As VICE News has previously reported many times, accidental fentanyl “exposure” isn’t a real thing. The idea that officers can overdose simply from touching or being in the presence of fentanyl is a myth that’s been widely debunked by scientists and drug policy experts. The misinformation in part was spread by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though the DEA has since reneged on that position. 

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As for viral videos of officers collapsing after being “exposed” to fentanyl, those have also been debunked by toxicologists, some of whom say the symptoms observed in those videos, such as dizziness and fainting, are more in line with panic attacks than with opioid overdoses. Symptoms of opioid overdose include a loss of consciousness and slow and shallow breathing. 

And yet, the fentanyl panic is driving public policy in the form of more aggressive punishments for people who use drugs. 

Drug seizures have actually been linked to significant increases in overdoses in the immediate vicinity where they take place, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health last year. That’s because when police carry out a drug bust, the drug users who rely on that supply have to find new and often unpredictable sources of drugs, which is particularly risky in the current era of synthetic drugs. 

In short: Lawmakers are proposing legislation designed to protect officers from a non-existent threat, while those same officers’ actions create greater risks for the people who are most vulnerable to the toxic drug supply. 

Meanwhile, opioid settlement money—over $50 billion in money from pharmaceutical companies who were sued for their role in the opioid epidemic, is starting to get farmed out to states and local governments, though the process has been criticized as opaque. 

The funds are meant to be used to treat opioid addiction and expand live-saving measures like the overdose antidote naloxone. But much of it is going to increased policing measures, including body scanners for inmates, patrol cars, phone hacking devices, and hiring more officers.

In August, the Open Society Policy Center, a non-profit advocacy group, published an open letter stating that settlement funds should not be used on law enforcement, which could “undermine public health programs” by confiscating sterile drug paraphernalia or scaring people out of calling for help during overdoses. 

“Let this… be the day we say ‘no’ to further criminalization and expansion of carceral systems and instead commit to using opioid settlement funds to advance positive change in our communities,” said the letter, signed by dozens of prominent drug policy experts.

By the looks of it, that day still hasn’t come. 

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