A post on Facebook, shared more than 19,000 times, warns that people are putting tape laced with fentanyl—a strong opioid painkiller—on car petrol caps which, when touched, “will kill you”.
There is no evidence this is true. The post appears to be the latest in a long list of unevidenced claims about people interfering with cars with malicious intent, such as sex traffickers using zip ties on door handles to distract a female victim or codes scrawled on car windows by supposed child traffickers.
Full Fact could find no reported case online of anyone ever having been harmed, or killed, by touching fentanyl-laced tape applied to a car.
As Snopes has previously written, briefly touching fentanyl—for example, the length of time it would take to pull a strip of tape from a petrol cap—would not be lethal.
Dr Ryan Marino, medical director of Toxicology & Addiction at University Hospitals, Cleveland, told Reuters: “You cannot overdose just by touching fentanyl or another opioid and you cannot overdose just by being around it.”
Fentanyl can be prescribed by doctors in the UK as a strong painkiller, in the form of a wearable patch or as a tablet, lozenge or nasal spray. It can also be administered through injection, though this is usually only in hospitals.