It's possible that none of the edible cannabis items, including the Delta 8 candies, actually included heroin or fentanyl, even though a Pennsylvania county prosecutor discovered their presence last week. The producers and retailers of the products made with legal hemp must cope with thousands of unanswered news stories in the interim.
District Attorney Kevin Steele of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, withdrew his warning about three kinds of Delta 8 edibles offered at Tobacco Hut outlets in the county north of Philadelphia, but he did not apologize for his claims. The findings were based on a highly sensitive portable testing apparatus that was calibrated to detect fentanyl at 1/100th of a nanogram, or 1/100th of a billionth of a gram.
To reach a deadly dose of two milligrams of fentanyl, one would need to consume 200 million gummies, each carrying 1/100th of a nanogram of the drug.
None of the goods that were confiscated tested positive for heroin or fentanyl in a typical drug testing facility.
"At this point, I don't have any definitive answers, but the public needs to be wary of these THC products that are produced in an unregulated industry and varying settings," stated Steele in his news release.
In other words, to paraphrase Steele's correction, you should be afraid even when there are no issues. He continued by saying that a teenager who "eats a handful at once" of delta 8 items "could be very dangerous."
That may be the case, but the risk would be that they would become extremely high rather than passing away from an overdose, which would happen if the products genuinely included appreciable amounts of fentanyl. Any product that doesn't contain fentanyl but could be dangerous if eaten in large quantities should heed Steele's warning.
District Attorney Steele stated that the public should still be afraid of the products of the four corporations, but for other reasons, instead of offering an apology for tarnishing their reputations. What remains to be seen is if the chain of Tobacco Hut or the producers of hemp products that Steele listed will file a lawsuit against Montgomery County and the District Attorney alleging harm to their fame.
The substance fentanyl has become a modern-day drug boogeyman, and law enforcement is known to experience fentanyl panic, as demonstrated by the frequent press reports about police officers experiencing anxiety-like symptoms that they attribute to fentanyl exposure.
