I wish I had seen this article almost a year ago to help put these fenty-weed myths to rest. I’ve covered this topic a few times, but the misinformation still persists as people try to deem fentanyl, a drug that has been used safely for decades (and has been in the illicit drug supply for decades), a WMD.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or any scientist) to reasonably conclude most of this information. All you need is a working knowledge of chemistry, but obviously everyone forgot (or never learned) about covalent and ionic bonds, melting/boiling point and what that means in terms of combustion/smoking/vaping, etc.

Maybe some of us are too young to know that old school freebasing cocaine made people’s homes explode because they were using highly flammable chemicals (ether). Freebasing comes from the two words “free” and “base”. The base alkaloid is more pure and can be smoked. The idea is that you’re freeing the base. That’s literally it lol. Now the HCL salt form AKA cocaine is boiled with sodium bicarbonate AKA baking soda to achieve the same thing as crack without blowing everything up.

All that to say, is that smoking a drug sometimes requires an intentional process, and won’t always happen by accident. Just because you throw two substances together and heat them up doesn’t mean they’re going to respond the same way. There’s actually a form of drug checking using a metling point apparatus. You can roughly figure out how many chemicals are present because they will melt and burn off at different temperatures.

Not everything is very orally bioavailable. Not everything is water soluble. Not everything is easily combustible. Just because a drug is potent doesn’t mean it’s so volatile to handle that there will be instantaneous or any harm done when “exposed”. Fentanyl (HCL) is not radioactive or some kind of noxious gas that is emitting potent fumes directly into your nose and eyes. Regular people handle these drugs every day with basic PPE like gloves.

I’ve handled several batches of known fentanyl contaminated drugs. Take off your gloves/wash your hands before rubbing your eyes, I guess. That’s probably basic lab safety tbh lol.