Our students are dying from opioid overdose. Schools must keep Narcan on hand to save them.
The case for Narcan in schools goes beyond saving the lives of students. It can help save their families. Overdose deaths among young people in the U.S. nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020, and that number continues to rise. In Kentucky alone more than 2,000 people died from overdoses in 2022 — mostly attributable to fentanyl. In Texas, fentanyl-related deaths surged nearly 600% between 2019 and 2022, with minors accounting for more than 200 of those deaths. That’s why I’m grateful the White House recently urged school districts nationwide to keep medication on hand that can reverse opioid overdoses. Naloxone, commonly marketed as Narcan, is highly effective and easy to administer as a nasal spray — and it saves lives.
Stock Narcan in every school nurses' office
Here in the Pike County School District in eastern Kentucky, we keep Narcan in all of our nurses’ offices. Thankfully, we have not had to use it on a student. We drug test our students regularly, hoping to catch problems before they are entrenched. Most often when a student tests positive for drugs, it’s for marijuana. But we know — often because they confide in teachers and school therapists — that many students have close family members who are addicted to opioids.
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In our school district, 73% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, meaning they come from households with incomes below $55,000 for a family of four. Purchasing a box of Narcan for nearly $50 can be prohibitively expensive for many of these families.
Narcan is needed for students and their parents
That’s why we recently decided to partner with HarborPath, a nonprofit organization that is trying to ensure Narcan is widely available to those who may need it. They provided us with 200 free kits, so that when we sense a student is living with someone who might risk overdosing, we can make a Narcan kit available to take home. It might be a grandparent raising a little girl because her daddy is on drugs. After all, Kentucky has one of the highest rates in the nation of children living with relatives or family friends – about 1 in 12. We hope the medicine is something they have and don’t need—rather than something they need and don’t have.
I hope Narcan will be an important part of the drug treatment plans that will be rolled out by our state’s Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, which will be funded with millions of dollars from the state’s legal settlement with the drug companies that helped create this crisis.
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I’m well aware that some people will think that having medicine on hand to counteract a drug overdose will just enable continued drug use. I can’t say that’s impossible. But I do know that there is no way to get a person into treatment and on their way back to a drug-free life if they’re dead.
Schools occupy a central place in our communities, and we understand that our role goes far beyond education. We provide students in need with free meals, food for the weekend when they risk having none, new clothing and mattresses when there’s a fire at home. We have a responsibility to keep our students healthy and progressing, and providing this lifeline in a time of crisis is an important part of that mission.
Dr. Reed Adkins is superintendent of Pike County School District and has worked and lived in eastern Kentucky for many years.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Students are dying of opioid overdose. Narcan belongs in schools
