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Three years ago, I wrote a column titled “Students Can’t Escape the Vape” where I said “Vaping by U.S. teens has reached monstrous proportions, threatening to hook a new generation of students on nicotine and other yet to be determined side-effects.” Boy, I miss those days.
Fast forward: in school vapers are now as ubiquitous as cell phone zombies – just sneakier. But with those failures behind us, let’s see what we can do about helping schools deal with this latest scourge of non-teaching issues – Fentanyl.
INCONCEIVABLE LOSS OF LIFE
Drug deaths among children ages 10 to 14 more than tripled from 2019 to 2020, according to an analysis done for CNN by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Unintentional drug overdoses led to 200,000 years of lost life for U.S. preteens and teens that died between 2015 and 2019. And experts suspect that the problem has gotten worse during the pandemic.
Fake prescription drugs are of particular concern right now as they are often laced with Fentanyl, an opiate 100 times more powerful than heroin that is causing historic levels of drug overdoses nationwide.
IT WORKS VERY WELL – DEAD WITH ONE PILL
For the most part, if a middle schooler experimented with drugs, it didn’t outright kill them – with Fentanyl the game can be over the first time you play. One pill, quick death.
Fentanyl is being mixed in with other illicit drugs to increase the potency of the drug, sold as powders and nasal sprays, and increasingly pressed into pills made to look like legitimate prescription opioids.
Teens are purchasing what they think are OxyContin, Percoset, Aderall or Xanax pills via social media, but drug dealers are making these fake pills with the cheaper, stronger Fentanyl to increase their profits.
Fentanyl is odorless, tasteless and colorless. Students never know what they’re getting
The pills are nicknamed “Blues” for their common color (though they can come in other colors) or “M30s” for the stamp on the pills. The tablets are so well made that even experienced users say that they can’t tell the difference between a counterfeit pill and a pill manufactured by a pharmaceutical company.
A MICROSCOPIC KILLER
These are not pharmaceutical-grade painkillers; they are pills made by drug dealers, mostly outside the country. There is no quality control. Pills in the same batch can have wildly varying levels of Fentanyl. The amount of Fentanyl it takes to overdose and die is equivalent to two grains of sand.
Fentanyl has become such a major problem among students that some schools have started keeping naloxone, an antidote to opioid overdoses that’s available under the brand name Narcan, on hand.
Renewed calls by researchers and advocates offer training on how to recognize and respond to overdoses. Staff members are able to “quickly and easily” administer Narcan, typically in the form of a nasal spray.
Social media is of course a major player in the drug pushing business. Dealers connect with kids online through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitch and YouTube. But why stop there? How about mixing in some creativity by using emojis.
The DEA has released an “emoji drug guide” after discovering how dealers are communicating with potential buyers. Google “DEA Drug Emoji” for a list of pretty smart emoji uses.
IS THERE A DEATH EMOJI?
Sadly enough the “Just Say No To Drugs” isn’t relevant after fourth grade. For the Fentanyl problem, perhaps a more in your face approach such as the DEA’s National campaign “One Pill Can Kill” is needed. And if that doesn’t work, perhaps a campaign: called “My Kid’s In the Coffin” will shake it up a bit.
However, I don’t think there’s an emoji for that since it would be bad for business.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder of The Student Success Project and Think Factory Consulting. He can be reached at 305-788-4105 or email at ritchie@thinkfactory.com and on Facebook and You Tube as The Student Success Project.
