TruNarc: To Narc or Not to Narc? 🐀
Another WFAM - Waste of the Week where communities are paying for a product out of fear and out of touch with how drugs work
Look, y’all...you’ll have to forgive our frustration, but the ‘fentanyl frenzy’ that gripped law enforcement and media since 2021 is still shaping terrible policy (looking at you, ‘fentanyl as a WMD’ boosters) and leaving our communities worse off.
Touching fentanyl alone will not lead to an overdose. This is a myth that has been widely debunked. Yet, if you’ve spent any time on local law enforcement social media, news reports, or opioid settlement spending documents, you’ve probably seen the warnings: “Fentanyl can absorb through your skin.”
“We need [STUFF] to protect law enforcement from deadly exposure to fentanyl.”
Social media posts and news reporting on this 2021 “event” in San Diego have almost 19 million views. And there are so many more stories just like this. The message is clear: fentanyl is so dangerous that just being near it could kill you. And when fear enters the room, profiteers selling a “solution” follow. Cue up billions in opioid settlement money, and we have a recipe for a WFAM bonanza.
Quick WFAM Project Updates (04.02.2026)
- Our database is at 649 WFAM examples
- 📈 +39 WFAM examples since last post
- Current WFAM Total: ~$39.2 mil
- 📈 +$3.5mil since last post
TruNarc: To Narc or Not to Narc? 🐀
Today, we're calling out spending opioid settlement money on handheld drug detectors for law enforcement:
TruNarc (Handheld Drug Detectors) (+$5,037,102)
- Vendors: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Anton Paar, Metrohm, Autoclear, 908 Devices, Detectachem
- Where: Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Wyoming
- Initial Spending: Device + training
- Long-term Costs: Maintenance, replacement, additional equipment
- Unallowable spending in: California, Indiana, South Carolina, & Virginia
- AKA: Ramen spectrometer, handheld ramen spectrometer, handheld spectrometer, handheld narcotics analyzer, pocket-size ramen, trace detectors, etc
Background
Let’s start with: what is a handheld drug detector device?
