It’s the rumor that just won’t die. The new culprit is JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, who has for months now claimed that he’s hearing from police officers that fentanyl from illegal immigrants is getting into our marijuana supply.
A new federally funded study has looked into the matter and found zero basis for any of this. The study comes from Harvard, Brown, and the FDA and was published in the Lancet Regional Health-America journal. 9 illicit drugs were sampled with over 12 million total, between 2013 and 2023. Their goal was to find any trends in the appearance of fentanyl.
This doesn’t mean there was no trace of fentanyl throughout. Of the samples, they found about half of their heroin contained fentanyl and a small uptick of fentanyl found in methamphetamine and cocaine (up to about 4% of samples starting in 2017) since the study began.
When it comes to cannabis, there’s no upswing. Prevalence of fentanyl in weed was below 0.3% in 2023.
So, again, while you can always find stories that can be used to garner an emotional response, these are not representative of the whole, and studies like this do a great job at telling the true story behind fentanyl in our illicit markets.
Check out the study here.
