Kevin McCarthy Repeats Dubious Claim That Woman Overdosed on Fentanyl by Picking Up a Dollar Bill

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) rattled off a list of grievances on Tuesday’s edition of Hannity: high gas prices, problems with public education, and fentanyl coming across the southern border. 

In doing so, McCarthy repeated the story of a woman who claimed she overdosed on fentanyl merely by picking up a dollar bill with the substance on it.

Numerous news outlets ran a story about a Kentucky woman named Renee Parsons who said she collapsed after touching the bill.

“As I was walking inside, there was a dollar on the floor just hanging out, so I picked it up, not thinking anything of it,” she said.

Parsons claimed her body went numb for 10 minutes and that she could not talk or breathe. Her husband drove her to a nearby hospital.

“We will secure the border and stop this movement of fentanyl the number one killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45,” McCarthy told Sean Hannity. “I don’t know if you saw that story of a young woman who picked up a dollar bill sitting on the floor of McDonald’s and fell down because fentanyl was on that dollar bill. This is how deadly this is.”

Stories about people – police officers, especially – overdosing after getting fentanyl on their skin have been rampant in recent years. However, experts have repeatedly cast doubt on the possibility that a person can overdose on the drug simply by touching it.

“Health-related misinformation continues to proliferate online, hampering responses to public health crises,” concluded one study about the phenomenon. “More evidence-informed tools are needed to effectively challenge misinformed narratives in mainstream and social media.”

Watch above via Fox News.