In a PSA posted by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office, listeners heard a harrowing, cautionary tale of a little girl who collapsed at the playground after touching a pile of fentanyl she found on the ground.

“She was only 6 years old,” the voice in the ad said.

The trouble is, the story was fake.

The public service announcement was part of the office’s $340,000 ad campaign to target opioid-related crimes in Sonoma County, an issue District Attorney Carla Rodriguez has championed for years. According to NorCal Public Media, the DA’s office had given $46,000 of that to the Amaturo Media Group for help making several radio spots, including this one about the 6-year-old. The ads were supposed to run on nine radio stations for six weeks.

Fentanyl is a lab-created synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was first synthesized in 1960 and approved by the FDA in 1972 for use as an IV painkiller. Pharmaceutically, it is used as a powerful pain reliever, but it is often developed and sold illegally in various forms.

“Until 2013, sporadic outbreaks of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs contaminating the heroin supply caused some deaths in heroin users,” reads a 2017 review article in the journal Neuropharmacology. “Since then, fentanyl has caused deaths in every state, and fentanyl and its analogs have completely infiltrated the North American heroin supply.”

Fentanyl has become a phantom in the drug market. Due to its potency, substances laced with fentanyl can cause accidental lethal overdoses.

“When prescribed by a doctor, fentanyl can be given as a shot, a patch that is put on a person’s skin, or as lozenges that are sucked like cough drops,” according to the NIH. Despite the substance’s strength, there has yet to be any record of an overdose from someone just casually touching the substance by accident.

“The one case in which fentanyl can be absorbed through the skin is with a special doctor-prescribed fentanyl skin patch, and even then, it takes hours of exposure,” according to UC Davis Health.

So the DA’s PSA about the little girl who collapsed from touching the stuff while at a playground raised some red flags.

“It’s impossible. Accidentally touching powder fentanyl cannot cause an overdose in any way,” toxicologist Ryan Marino told NorCal Public Media.

According to SFGate, a journalist from NorCal Public Media asked the DA’s office about the anecdote in the PSA. When he asked Rodriguez for proof of the incident, she had an unusual response.

“It is not based on a true story,” Rodriguez told him.

This isn’t the first time officials have erroneously claimed fentanyl overdose from an impossible means.

Police officers have been known to report physical symptoms from traffic stops involving fentanyl — symptoms some experts suspect are actually due to panic attacks, McClatchy News previously reported.

A 2020 study in the International Journal of Drug Policy examined 551 U.S.-based news articles on fentanyl-related events, risks and policy responses between 2015 and 2019.

Of those articles, 92% contained misinformation on “rumored risks” of indirect exposure to the narcotic via touch or inhalation.

While fentanyl carries enormous risks when ingested above a specifically prescribed dose, medical professionals want the public to beware of misinformation.

Marino told NorCal Public Media that parents don’t need to be afraid of an instant overdose from their child simply touching fentanyl.

“The science is very sound; there has never actually been a case of this,” he told the outlet.

The PSA disappeared from the DA’s website shortly after the journalist’s inquiry.

Rodriguez told SF Gate that her office took down the ad because it was inaccurate and that she “does not want to scare people.”

According to UC Davis Health, it is important to know what a real opioid overdose looks like, in case you are ever in the presence of one. When someone overdoses on an opioid, their breathing will slow, they get sleepy and soon become unconscious. “They would also have small pupils and would be minimally breathing or not breathing at all. People who have overdosed on any opioid need help immediately.”

If you find someone who has overdosed on fentanyl or another opioid, you should call 911 right away.

“If you have naloxone (commonly referred to by the brand name Narcan) you should administer it to them intranasally through the nose or through an injection,” the organization said. Naloxone is a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses.

“In California, anyone can get naloxone without a prescription.”

‘Not possible.’ Experts question video of California deputy’s ‘overdose’ on fentanyl

There’s no proof touching fentanyl leads to overdoses — yet myths spread online

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