DEA’s Rainbow Fentanyl Moral Panic Is Making Broadcasters, Politicians Stupider Than They Already Are
from the look,-they-don't-need-the-help dept
Some news outlets engage in journalism. Others just engage in hype. The latter tend to repeat press releases verbatim, only ask for statements from law enforcement when law enforcement screws up, and otherwise cater to the “if it bleeds, it leads” maxim that has allowed mass media to portray America as a criminal dystopia despite crime levels in most of the nation still bottom-feeding on historical lows.
The DEA hitched up the hype wagon and started making everyone stupider after a seizure of fentanyl pills in unexpected colors. While most fentanyl is compressed into drab blue-ish pills, the new stuff was multi-colored. The most reasonable explanation was brand differentiation being deployed by dealers seeking to secure long-term buy-in.
The DEA cared not for logical explanations. Instead, it claimed the colorful pills were a way of pitching deadly drugs to minors. Even stupider people (including powerful elected representatives) claimed the multi-colored pills were going to be given away — possibly as treats to trick-or-treaters — to build lifetime loyalty from the poorest and most fickle demographic of all: the children.
“Rainbow fentanyl — fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes — is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.
With all due respect, shut the the fuck up. Even the use of the word “amongst” isn’t enough to make this bullshit assertion credible.
People who actually have to deal with drugs (rather than just issue asinine statements about drugs) are smarter than that. Cops are the primary beneficiaries of drug hysteria but even some cops are unwilling to play up the DEA’s ridiculous narrative. There’s a danger here, but it’s not drug dealers pressing colorful pills and stalking social media in search of minors without regular sources of income.
“I don’t think that people will be giving out fentanyl pills as candy, that doesn’t make sense from an addicts perspective that they treasure something so valuable,” said Officer Roman Trujilo, KPD. “However, with all of the candy out there, there are potential users that might have purchased these pills and if they have them around and their kids come across them, that could be absolutely deadly. “
The early October DEA-enabled hysteria dovetailed into the usual Halloween moral panic, where some sensational newscasters and always sensational law enforcement officials took the DEA’s statements and ran with them, cautioning parents against something that has never happened: trick-or-treaters being given drugs, rather than much, much cheaper candy. This is from the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi, whose article calls bullshit on the DEA-encouraged moral panic currently being treated as actual fact by far too many people.
[T]he link between children and rainbow fentanyl — which differs only in its color and packaging from other fentanyl-based street drugs — appears to be theoretical at best. Its association with Halloween also may be specious, part of a long tradition of urban myths about poisoned treats such as razor blades in apples and cannabis-infused gummy bears, said Joel Best, a University of Delaware professor who studies such contemporary legends.
Best has yet to find a confirmed incident of a child being seriously injured or killed from contaminated trick-or-treat candy since he began compiling data on the topic in the mid-1980s.
That’s four decades of data. And nothing moral panic purveyors claim will happen year after year has actually happened. Despite this, the moral panic artists are granted credence — year after year — to provide statements to schools, parents groups, law enforcement agencies, and newscasters wanting something to drag viewer’s eyeballs away from their newspapers, phones, children, or whatever else might distract them from staying hooked through the advertising break.
The DEA released its stupid statements on August 30. Things were dormant until it was Halloween season. Then everything took off. More than 1,400 print and broadcast stories have parroted the DEA’s incredible assertions since the beginning of October.
And it’s not just mainstream newscasters looking for something to hype, like morning shows on major networks. It’s also groups with axes to grind, which have decided to convert the DEA’s stupidity into political capital.
The subject has come up countless times on social media, as well; the conservative Heritage Foundation attempted to place the alleged threat in the context of inflation and its opposition to the Biden administration. “The price of Skittles jumped 42% from last year,” the think tank tweeted last week. “Not to mention the cartels are stuffing Skittles bags with deadly fentanyl. Happy Halloween from the Biden administration.”
This assertion is even stupider than the DEA’s. The Heritage Foundation’s twitted assertion is that cartels are emptying Skittles from bags and refilling them with exceedingly more expensive fentanyl. And somehow, Joe Biden is to blame. Also, somehow, Mars Wrigley felt compelled to issue a statement to rebut this tweet, even though a quick glance at its visible metrics confirms it has been ratioed to hell and back.
Having enjoyed a few weeks of favorable coverage and very little journalistic pushback, the tide appears to have turned. The DEA is actually walking back the most sensational parts of its fentanyl conspiracy theories:
As it happens, Milgram, the DEA’s top official, recently clarified her initial comments about rainbow fentanyl and children, explicitly discouraging the link between the drug and Halloween.
“We are not seeing it in elementary schools,” she told Fox News last month. “We have not seen it with Halloween candy.”
It’s not a complete denial of its earlier assertions, but at least it provides some facts that went (deliberately) missing during the DEA’s original media push. Not that it mattered to Fox News.
The banner on-screen, however, delivered a different message: “Rainbow fentanyl warnings ahead of Halloween.”
If it bleeds, it leads. And too many newscasters and opportunistic politicians are hoping its your child that bleeds.
If you want kids to stay safe, stop burying them in bullshit. The more facts that are available, the better equipped everyone is to handle actual threats to safety, rather than the imagined drug dragons pushed by America’s many fear dealers, who absolutely count on children to be online as much as possible. That makes them more receptive to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and outright lies… including those pushed by government agencies, government officials, and newscasters more concerned about viewer share than responsible reporting.
Filed Under: dea, fentanyl, halloween, media, moral panic, rainbow fentanyl