Curt Flewelling – FISM News
Naloxone (brand name Narcan) will be supplied to every school in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the wake of nine student deaths throughout the district in recent weeks.
The medication is routinely used to reverse the effects of suppressed breathing in opioid overdose. The drug is effective in as little as two minutes and can be easily administered by nasal spray or injection.
“We have an urgent crisis on our hands. Research shows that the availability of naloxone along with overdose education is effective at decreasing overdoses and death – and will save lives,” L.A. schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a recent press conference. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that not another student in our community is a victim to the growing opioid epidemic.”
Many students are purchasing what they think are common painkillers such as Percocet but, unbeknownst to them, the pills are actually laced with fentanyl. This synthetic opioid is 50–100 times stronger than morphine. Overdose from this drug is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45.
LAPD Chief of Police Michael Moore confirmed that 10 pills that police confiscated tested positive for fentanyl.
“It speaks to the impurities of street narcotics. Fentynal is a very dangerous drug, and this dosage can range from being a painkiller to a depressant to death,” Moore said.
Fifteen-year-old Melaine Ramos, the most recent victim of a drug overdose, was found unresponsive in a school bathroom last week.
Her aunt, Gladys Manriques, told Eyewitness News, ‘I’m angry that these kids had got ahold of these pills and decided to distribute them at school knowing what this can do to somebody. There’s somebody connected to them and somebody who hired them, people are calling it a pandemic, I call it a plague, a crisis, ‘Its poison’.”
Although reactive measures such as stocking Narcan are essential and drug education campaigns are helpful, some feel that we are overlooking the pink elephant in the room.
U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.) feels that our main focus when tackling the fentanyl epidemic should start with border security.
“As a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, I have seen firsthand how the worsening crisis at America’s southern border has exacerbated the fentanyl epidemic,” LaTurner said. “Mexican cartels continue to take advantage of the Biden administration’s inability to gain operational control of the border.”