Thread by @fentasyl

Was George Floyd a fentanyl addict? There's no evidence he was.

George Floyd was a user of classical opioids. He got poisoned, like so many Americans, by "oxycodone 30mg" pills that were actually fentanyl.

What we do know:
He had trace Morphine in his blood, indicating use ~5 days prior.
The pills he had were fentanyl + meth, no morphine.

Tolerance to traditional opioids does not confer tolerance to fentanyl's unique mechanism of respiratory depression.

This is one of the big reasons it is so profoundly deadly.
Heroin / oxycodone / morphine addicts have tolerance to the euphoric effects, but not to the respiratory depression.

3 partially digested fentanyl pills fell out of George Floyd's mouth into the squad car. Other pills may have fallen onto street.

The average fentanyl pill circa 2020 contained ~2mg of fentanyl (a potentially lethal dose without tolerance)

Floyd's stomach contents were collected during autopsy but never tested, unfortunately.

The thing about fentanyl, it's extremely well-absorbed sublingually. That's why it's provided as medicinal lollipops for cancer patients.
And, due to its lipophilicity, gets partitioned rapidly into the brain/CNS.

George Floyd had at least 3000ug, likely 6000ug, and possibly much more fentanyl in his mouth for quite a long time.

Peak plasma concentration for sublingual fentanyl is ~20min post-administration.
Take a guess when that would be in the video...

George Floyd had 11ng/mL fentanyl & 5.6ng/mL norfentanyl in his blood while he was still alive in the hospital -- pre-mortem concentrations.

That's equivalent to 30-60 ng/mL in postmortem samples. That's 2x-5x the average lethal concentration in fentanyl overdoses.

Drugs commonly re-partition postmortem. Fentanyl blood concentration increases by 3x 6-8hr postmortem, & 5.5x in 24hr.

The average postmortem concentrations are 13.2ng/mL fentanyl & 4.6 ng/mL norfentanyl.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, you understand why my account handle is @fentasyl

I should note, the meth story is a red herring. The pills he took did have methamphetamine in them. But they tested at only ~15mg of meth per pill.

Not a huge dose by any stretch -- the usual effective dose of meth (Desoxyn) for children for ADHD is 20-25mg -- and meth isn't anywhere near as effective sublingually as fentanyl.

Also, his blood concentration of meth, as tested in the hospital, was equivalent to him having IV'ed about 10mg. It just wasn't a big dose.

One other thing that you may have noticed if you watched the trial.
The apparent false statements made by the prosecutions witnesses about the hospital blood sample taken from George Floyd.

This is a pivotal fact that holds together the entire case against it being an overdose.

Embarrassing that the defense failed to catch it.

There was evidence submitted that even pointed out the reason of taking hospital blood was to avoid postmortem distribution.

And the prosecution kept equating Floyd's blood levels with postmortem samples.

And the defense said nothing.

Was very annoying to watch.