Kellyanne Conway , Counselor to the President , has replicate a myth about the dangers of marijuana being laced withfentanyl , a   brawny synthetic opioid and one of the most common drug involved in overdose deaths in the United States .

“ People are unknowingly ingesting it . It ’s laced into heroin , marijuana , meth , cocaine , and it ’s also just being distributed by itself , ” Conway said in a news league last hebdomad , as reported byBuzzFeed News .

While the fentanyl - contamination has been seen in heroin , and sometimes in cocaine and methamphetamine , there is no conclusive grounds of fentanyl - laced marijuana incidents . Snopes.com has anextensive fact - checking articlefull of claims of fentanyl in weed . It usher that any theme of contamination was not base on fact .

When ask about the claim , White House spokespersons refer to a2018 speechby Nora Volkow , director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse ( NIDA ) . She say that " fentanyl is being used to spike a extensive form of drugs , including marijuana . ”

The substructure for this claim is anecdotical reports from a Vancouver police story in 2015 , but the BuzzFeed story shows that the same police force department say they had not seen such a thing . No marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration has had any important trace of the grave opioid in it . Despite the complete absence of proof , the myth does n’t give way . The myth has gone from hearsay and urban legend to being legitimized by the federal government .

These claim , and many like them , keep getting repeated over and over until they are often arrogate to be   true because “ everyone has heard of them . ” Another enduring myth is that severe fentanyl   toxicity can be easy assimilated through the skin . If this were truthful , it would   be risky news for first responders and law enforcement . However , once again   members of governance agencies are repeating   the information until someone , like theAmerican College of Medical Toxicologyfor object lesson , actually look into it .

On average,130 Americans dieevery 24-hour interval due to opioid - touch on overdose . Fentanyl is involved in 59 percent of those deaths , roughly 28,000 deaths per year . That ’s a Brobdingnagian increase over the last ten , when   it was only responsible for 14.3 per centum of deaths in 2010 .

[ H / T : BuzzFeed News ]