MIAMI – With the get started of the new faculty calendar year, university districts are working to teach college students and family members about a drug epidemic plaguing the country.
Fentanyl overdoses in teens aged 14 to 18 amplified by 94% from 2019 to 2020.
Teens may well imagine they are having prescription drugs like Percocet or Valium – bought by using e-commerce internet sites, social media or as a result of close friends, but people products could be counterfeits that comprise lethal doses of the artificial opioid. It will take just a little little bit of fentanyl to eliminate you.
Kendall Cortelyou is the director of the School of World wide Health Management and Informatics at the College of Central Florida.
“Fentanyl overdoses ended up steadily, steadily climbing, and then in 2020, we took a immediate convert upward,” Courtelyou stated. “We noticed a dramatic spike in fentanyl overdoses all through the pandemic.”
She stated the introduction of fentanyl into the current market is largely to blame. The probabilities that the tablet somebody is shopping for on social media or from any individual who is not a doctor incorporates fentanyl Is substantial.
“A capsule that you get has about a 60 to 70% likelihood of made up of a lethal dose of fentanyl,” she reported. “No matter what form of tablet it is due to the fact so quite a few pressed tablets can be built to appear just like an oxycontin to be manufactured to look precisely like an Adderall.”
Courtelyou and Lisa Keeler work for Undertaking Opioid South Florida, an educational corporation that partnered with Miami-Dade Schools. They have presently prepared 100 assemblies to communicate with college students and dispersed 1,000 sprays of Naloxone, which is the overdose reversal medicine.
“We’re setting up the assemblies with our associates,” Keeler stated. “The Fentanyl Father’s, the DEA, and the Miami Poison Control Center”
She explained pupils need to have to recognize these trends are not just impacting drug addicts, they’re impacting teenagers and people today who will not know what they’re having.
“Kids will not comprehend that they’re on Snapchat, and they imagine that they are getting an Adderall, or they think that they are receiving a Xanax. And what they are genuinely receiving is a tablet that has fentanyl in it,” she stated.
Just two milligrams can destroy you, which is the equivalent of 10 to 15 grains of salt.
“People today are overdosing each day, particularly in the tri-county,” she explained. “So, you know, it is a massive problem and we need to have to deal with it and we will need to communicate about it.”
Lisa Keeler reported carrying Narcan is just as critical as acquiring a fire extinguisher close by. Her corporation is in the process of doing work with Broward County Educational institutions as properly.
Broward County Educational institutions associate with United Way of Broward County and other local community companies to teach pupils and develop overdose prevention toolkits.
