{"id":2946,"date":"2021-12-10T23:49:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/CAIiEDEQNzDQimH2Na2yh6IubAIqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowiMz3CjChn9cCML3NpAY"},"modified":"2021-12-10T23:49:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T23:49:00","slug":"viral-story-shared-across-social-media-about-two-teens-overdosing-on-fentanyl-laced-marijuana-in-springfield-masslive-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=2946","title":{"rendered":"Viral story shared across social media about two teens overdosing on fentanyl-laced marijuana in Springfield – MassLive.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

The story was alarming and spread quickly:<\/p>\n

Two Springfield high school students had been admitted to the emergency department having smoked marijuana laced with fentanyl.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took 8 hits of Narcan to revive one of the unconscious youth,\u201d the story, claiming to be from \u201cThe Baystate Emergency Room\u201d stated.<\/p>\n

The teens claimed the fentanyl-laced marijuana had come from a cannabis dispensary, one version of the message stated.<\/p>\n

The story, passed up to the Hampden District Attorney\u2019s office and then forwarded to various community partners this week, was rapidly spread via email and social media through area school and police departments by community members concerned that fentanyl \u2014 a powerful synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine \u2014 had made it into a now legal and widely used drug.<\/p>\n

The problem is that none \u2014 or at least most \u2014 of the story does not appear to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaystate Health has not issued any communications on this matter,\u201d Baystate Health Director of Public Affairs Shelly Hazlett told MassLive in a statement. \u201cWhen a situation arises that is deemed a public health concern, we work with the appropriate agencies and governing bodies to address.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, Hazlett said, was not the case here.<\/p>\n

Instead, MassLive has learned, the story appears to be a real-life case of \u201cthe telephone game\u201d \u2014 that old party icebreaker where one person whispers a story to the next person and on and on until it gets to the last person who then repeats the story they heard (typically vastly changed from the original).<\/p>\n

According to James Leydon, spokesman for Hamden DA Anthony Gulluni, the story was originally shared with the DA\u2019s office through one of their community partners. From there, a community outreach person in the DA\u2019s office sent out an email that included that it was an alert from Baystate. Baystate, however, had not issued the alert.<\/p>\n

The unverified story quickly spread and took on a life of its own.<\/p>\n

The alerts quickly spread on social media this week, some of which had screenshots of the full email, including email addresses from Bay Path University staff and the DA\u2019s office. The email addresses added to the legitimacy of the posts.<\/p>\n

Eventually, screenshots of just the alert from \u201cBaystate Emergency Room\u201d were also being shared.<\/p>\n

A school nurse in Hampden County, public school teachers in Massachusetts and Connecticut, school committee members, therapists, social workers and more shared the messages.<\/p>\n

\u201dURGENT ALERT FROM BAYSTATE, SPRINGFIELD!\u201d states a post from Childrens Champions<\/a>, the Facebook page for The Support Network, which is a program of the Western Massachusetts Training Consortium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201dHeads up. This morning this came to my work email and the work email of every school nurse in MA,\u201d another person wrote on Facebook. \u201cBaystate ER and Hamden County DA not prone to exaggeration or over reaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the posts were then also shared by others in the community.<\/p>\n

But the details of the email were fake – there never had been fentanyl-laced marijuana in Springfield.<\/p>\n

The Cannabis Control Commission told MassLive in a statement that it was made aware of this issue on Dec. 7 and immediately opened an investigation in collaboration with law enforcement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe agency undertakes all possible due diligence to follow up on allegations of marijuana product contamination and diversion, and has the capacity to respond immediately in the event that a risk to the public health, safety, or welfare, is identified,\u201d the commission said in the statement.<\/p>\n

The concern about marijuana laced with fentanyl is not completely out of the blue, however. In November, Connecticutt officials warned of drug overdoses from people claiming to have only taken marijuana.<\/p>\n

CBS News reported<\/a> a cluster of cases in October in Plymouth, Connecticut and that a lab test of some of the marijuana used confirmed the presence of fentanyl.<\/p>\n

And in a separate report in Brattleboro, Vermont, a lab test of marijuana<\/a> that was initially thought to be laced with fentanyl showed no fentanyl present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story was alarming and spread quickly: Two Springfield high school students had been admitted to the emergency department having smoked marijuana laced with fentanyl. \u201cIt took 8 hits of Narcan to revive one of the unconscious youth,\u201d the story, claiming to be from \u201cThe Baystate Emergency Room\u201d stated. The teens claimed the fentanyl-laced marijuana had come from a cannabis dispensary, one version of the message stated. The story, passed up to the Hampden District Attorney\u2019s office and then forwarded to various community partners this week, was rapidly spread via email and social media through area school and police departments… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/viral-story-shared-across-social-media-about-two-teens-overdosing-on-fentanyl-laced-marijuana-in-springfield-masslive-com.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}