Did Mooresville police warn about zip ties laced with fentanyl being placed on tire rims by sex or drug traffickers as claimed in several viral Facebook posts? No, that's not true: The Mooresville Police Department denied the rumor in a Facebook post of their own. Despite what urban legends say, fentanyl is not easily absorbed through skin contact so even if this happened it would be an entirely impractical way to quickly drug someone.
An example of the viral rumor could be seen in this Facebook post (archived here) published on March 6, 2025. It read:
Warning 🚨 My nephew and his girlfriend went to Meijer Friday night it was late they are young and apparently didn't notice anything or anyone following them, however at some point and time once home they noticed a zip tie was placed on their front driver's side rim. They took a picture and my sister notified the Mooresville police. They came out and let them know that sex traffickers and drug traffickers place this on victims tires sometimes it can be laced with fentanyl to make the victims pass out so they can take them. They let her know to never remove it because that gives them time to kidnap them. Please if you have young daughters who drive make them aware and tell them to always watch their surroundings. This is scary and too close to home!
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Mar 10 20:22:02 2025 UTC)
However on February 2, 2025 the Mooresville, Indiana, Metropolitan Police Department already put out a statement on their Facebook page (archived here) that read:
We wanted to address this post that is circulating on the Mooresville Community Chat. Several people have contacted me asking about the legitimacy of the post. We are not aware of any documented incidents where this technique is used to kidnap or traffic anyone and would be interested to learn which one of our officers started this. There may have been a misunderstanding about the information or source since Meijer in Camby is in the jurisdiction of the Hendricks County Sheriff.
As Lead Stories already wrote in a previous fact check about a similar urban legend:
"These are not accurate suggestions and there is no scientific evidence of this," Linda Cottler, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Florida, told Lead Stories in an email received on September 20, 2022.
Accidental skin contact of fentanyl has been described as a "medical impossibility" and such content along with purported events in the posts is not only fearmongering, but also vague. Rarely do posters specify a location, date, or victim, nor do they include official warnings or reports from law enforcement. In response to an inquiry from Lead Stories on September 19, 2022, a spokesperson for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) said in an email that the agency is not "immediately aware of any formally documented trends or research on this topic within NIDA's portfolio."
Fears of such purported attacks were called "hysteria" in a commentary published in Science Magazine on July 15, 2022. A month prior, researchers at Cambridge University tested part of the scenario by exposing a test subject to a 10 micrograms/mL solution of pharmaceutical fentanyl citrate by placing the solution on the subject's hand. No signs of opioid intoxication or overdose were recorded, and the person simply washed their hand following the test. To reach dangerous blood levels, a person would need to soak their limbs in such a solution for an extended period of time, concluded the authors of the study, which was titled, "Accidental Occupational Exposure to a Large Volume of Liquid Fentanyl on a Compromised Skin Barrier with No Resultant Effect."
Even so, such reports do "pop up from time to time," NIDA told Lead Stories. In August 2022, for example, a Texas woman claimed that she was drugged after touching a napkin stuffed into her car door handle. However, officials with the Houston Police Department, with whom a police report was filed, have not found evidence to corroborate the woman's story as of this writing.
"There are numerous reports online related to a single incident in Houston. This is not a legitimate concern -- illicit drugs like fentanyl are not absorbed through the skin," Bruce Goldberg, a toxicologist and director of the Division of Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine, told Lead Stories in an email received on September 20, 2022.
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You can find previous Lead Stories fact checks about fentanyl here.
