A VIRAL VOICE note claiming that a woman had been drugged by touching a business card given to her by “foreign nationals” has been spread widely online, despite no evidence that it is real.

Northern Irish police have said that there have been no reports of the incident, and The Journal was unable to find any recorded cases of someone being drugged through skin contact in Ireland or in Northern Ireland.

Additionally, a knockout chemical that can be delivered by handling a business card would be prohibited under chemical weapons conventions.

The story in the viral voicemail starts with a description of a “girl” filling her car at a Limavady petrol station.

“Three foreign nationals pulled up in a car behind her. Said they were painters and decorators and did she need any work,” a woman’s voice recounts in the voicemail.

“They offered her a business card in case she changed her mind in the future. And she says ‘no, I’m grand.’ but eventually took the card. Got into the car. Drove on,” the story continues.

“Within a short space of time she started to feel unwell. Felt she was going to pass out. There was gel or something on her hand from the card. They had tried to drug her,” the voice note says.

“They were following her so she pulled into a housing estate and just started to blare the horn as she was getting weaker.

The voice note begins by asking listeners to share the story far and wide and ends, saying:“We are just becoming more and more racist”.

The voicemail was also shared on social media, including the social media pages of Niall McConnell, who regularly shares misinformation smearing foreign nationals.

His version of the story has been viewed more than 245,000 times on Facebook, according to that site’s stats.

McConnell’s post of featuring the voice note also includes images, including an appeal to stop the building of a so-called mega-mosque in Letterkenny.

(The actual plans are for a mosque with a capacity for 150 people, and a smaller floor area than nearby churches).

The video ends with an appeal to sign up for a “gold membership” to Siol na hÉireann, an anti-immigrant group led by McConnell. According to the group’s website, membership costs €119 a year.

Síol na hÉireann is not a registered political party.  

The Journal has previously debunked numerous false claims spread by McConnell. 

As with those stories, there is no evidence to support the claim about “foreign nationals” drugging a woman through a business card.

“We are aware of online speculation concerning an incident at a forecourt in the Ballyquinn Road area of the town,” Chief Inspector Michelle Adams said in a statement put out by the police service for the area, Causeway Coast and Glens.

“No formal report has been made to police, and we are carrying out a number of enquiries into the circumstances of what may have happened, and the nature of these reports online.”

A later post noted that the police enquiries had been completed. “No evidence was identified by officers throughout the course of enquiries to substantiate online speculation,” Inspector Adams said.

Additionally, the story as it is described stretches credulity. While there are some substances that can incapacitate through skin contact alone, there are generally classed as chemical weapons and are strictly controlled.

And even in documented cases where such weapons have been used, such as the Salisbury poisoning using Novichok, the effects were not immediate. The victims took weeks to die. In another famous case, the killing of Kim Jong Un’s exiled half-brother with the nerve agent VX, liquids were directly smeared on the victim’s face. 

In both those cases, all evidence indicates the assassins were working for states with documented histories of using chemical weapons.

Urban legends about drugs that can quickly knock people out through brief contact are widespread, though often scientifically impossible.

In recent years, there have been numerous claims that emergency responders have been knocked unconscious through skin contact with fentanyl — an opioid considered 50 times more powerful than heroin — or its users.

In a position statement released by the American College of Medical Toxicology and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, they said that, despite Fentanyl being able to cross the skin barrier, the chances of it causing someone to lose consciousness by accidentally touching it was “unlikely”.

They noted that if both palms were covered in medical grade Fentanyl patches, even in ideal conditions it would take 14 minutes to absorb 100 mcg of the drug — which is within the upper range used for general anaesthesia for someone weighing 50kg.

“Even a high dose of fentanyl prepared for transdermal administration cannot rapidly deliver a high dose”, their statement reads.

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