'It's practically health care': WA teens urge lawmakers to require Narcan in every high school

Jan. 11—OLYMPIA — Lucas Daniel Trujillo-Petty, of Tacoma, was only 16 when he died of fentanyl poisoning on Oct. 31, 2022.

His mother wept as she testified Thursday to a state government education committee in Olympia, urging lawmakers to pass a law requiring high schools in Washington to stock Narcan, an opioid antidote.

"Fentanyl is killing our children at such rapid rates," Maria Petty said. "High school is the age that kids feel invincible and curious. I don't believe that the majority of these children that have died due to this drug or become addicted to this drug were out looking for fentanyl."

Fentanyl is a potent synthetic opioid drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic. It is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin as an analgesic.

Naloxone, also known as Narcan, quickly reverses an opioid overdose, including ones induced by fentanyl, by blocking its sedative effects and restoring normal breathing within a couple of minutes.

Lake Washington High School seniors brought the idea for the bill to prime sponsor Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue. Ten of those seniors testified at the hearing.

Right now, state law only requires high schools with more than 2,000 students to acquire opioid reversal medication. There are nearly 300 school districts in Washington. About 200 of them have fewer than 2,000 students. That means 35,000 students in Washington attend schools that don't have Narcan in the building.

The proposed bill would require all Washington school districts, not just those with more than 2,000 students, to have at least one opioid reversal kit in all high schools within their district. It further requires districts to enact an opioid-related overdose policy.

"A pack of two naloxone dispensers would be only $50 for each school," student Joanna Lymberis said. "This is an incredibly menial fee, especially since the bill allows the naloxone to be procured from charity foundations."

In 2022, 36 Washington teens reportedly died from an overdose involving opioids, student Theodore Meek testified. That number would be doubled if not for Narcan — the opioid reversal medication saved more than 40 student lives in the state during the 2022-2023 school year.

When a student overdoses, more than just one person is impacted. Students, parents and teachers face the collective trauma that comes with witnessing an overdose, said Lake Washington senior Sophia Lymberis.

On Thursday, the state Department of Health announced it is now offering all public high schools in Washington two kits of naloxone nasal spray.

Spokane is ahead of the curve

All Spokane high schools currently have Narcan available, and in 2022 they took it one step further to carry it in all schools and school buildings.

Becky Doughty, executive director of school support services who also is in charge of Spokane Public Schools' nursing staff, said her nurses have administered Narcan to unconscious students and it has worked.

In the Spokane school district, every building is equipped with Narcan, Doughty told The Spokesman-Review. The school district decided to put it in every school building, even elementary and middle schools, a couple of years ago.

"The beauty of this medication is that if we have adolescent students who we find either becoming unconscious or they are unconscious, and we don't know the reason for that, they don't have a known medical history, we can treat them with Narcan and if they have not overdosed on opioids, it's not going to hurt them," Doughty said. "It's almost really becoming part of our first-response toolkit for treating a medical emergency."

On Thursday afternoon, Tristan Fogle rode the bus home from Mt. Spokane High School through the brisk wind. Fogle, a senior, picked up the phone when a Spokesman-Review reporter called him to get his thoughts on putting Narcan in all high schools. Fogle thinks it's a great idea.

"It's practically health care," he said. "I think any type of expansion of health care or education on health care is a positive thing. I don't think there are any downsides to it."

Fogle added he is definitely aware of some peers who use substances, and that he wouldn't be surprised if some had used opioids before.

"Some people (at Mt. Spokane) are very into drugs; it's a worrying thing to see because it is a slippery slope," Nate Sexton, another senior at Mt. Spokane, told The Spokesman-Review.

In 2022, more than 2,000 people died of opioid-involved overdoses in Washington. That's more than twice the number who died of the same cause in 2019. Indigenous communities face death rates four times higher than the statewide average.

In 2022, high school students in Spokane, Bellevue and Redmond died from opioid overdoses.

In Spokane County, fentanyl was detected in 72% of all fatal overdoses in 2022, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

In another bill proposed to the committee on Thursday, all students in seventh and ninth grade would be educated on opioid and fentanyl prevention in hopes of reducing the number of opioid-related deaths beginning in the 2024-2025 school year.

Colville Tribal Business Council Chairman Jarred Michael-Erickson spoke in support of the opioid education bill Thursday.

"Education is a key component of battling this epidemic," Michael-Erickson said. We need the message to come from as many of our federal, state or Tribal communities as possible. ... Fentanyl education in schools will help the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation's approximately 1,786 students."

Ellen Dennis' work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.