Teen Deaths Rose Sharply From Fentanyl-Laced Pills

NPR TELLS THE STORY –

April 12, 2022 – “So many of our young people are so busy being taught to not use drugs that when they are exposed to them or they’re surrounded by it, they actually have very little information to go off of to keep themselves or their friends safe around the decisions they make surrounding drugs,” says Vakharia.

Vakharia and her colleagues have developed a school curriculum called Safety First, which teaches youth about the risks of drug use and how to identify signs of an overdose and how to address it.

Pilot studies of this curriculum in schools around the country revealed that students who took this training knew the signs of an overdose and how to respond to it, says Vakharia.

She adds that schools need to play an important role in addressing this, not just by adopting curricula like the one she and her colleagues created, but also by making naloxone, the overdose medication, easily available to their students.

“Naloxone … is an incredibly safe medication that we’d love to see in school first aid kits,” she says. “And to be getting our young people trained on these medications and using this medication for an overdose.”