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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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I'm no doctor, but his autopsy reported 11 ng/mL of fentanyl and 5.6 ng/mL of norfentanyl (an inactive metabolite of fentanyl). This indicates the dose was recent. He had a habit of doing this (based on a 2019 arrest where he tossed back a handful of percs while in the passenger seat of a car being pulled over for having an invalid plate). And there were meth/fent pill fragments in the car with Floyd's DNA. That being said, opioids via oral route generally take longer to cause an overdose compared to injection, obviously, and the entire arrest took slightly over 20 minutes. And another expert testified that Floyd didn't show the classic signs of overdose. Fent is much stronger than oxy or morphine, but the chemical pathway is identical, so tolerance to one should affect the other.

My assumption would be that he took way more than 11 ng/ml, and that was just how much had metabolized by the time bio-activity stopped. Plus he had multiple other heart/lung health issues and was obviously having the kind of crashout that can make a fat middle-aged man die.

And I'm not a doctor either, but my understanding was that fent was something like 50 times stronger than oxy, processed faster, and there was only a partial carryover for tolerance, which is exactly why "Expected oxy, got fent, ODed and died" is a cliche that happens tens of thousands of times per year.