(Daily360.com) – As the United States border remains open for virtually all to enter, fentanyl and other illegal narcotics are more common in the country than ever before. As a result, more Americans are overdosing and drug-use mortality rates among teens are as high as they’ve ever been. The Biden Administration is offering to help, not by closing the border or cracking down on the cartels that bring in into the country, but by offering naloxone training to teachers.
Naloxone is an immediate, emergency-use drug for people who have overdosed. It can reverse an opioid overdose in the short term and allow time for the person to be brought to a hospital emergency room. The most widely known brand of naloxone is the FDA approved, Narcan. Studies show that when administered quickly the overdose victim can be saved.
Statistics indicate that roughly two thirds of all overdose deaths occurred with other people near the victim. Studies show a 94% increase of overdose deaths in young people between the ages of 14 to 18-years old from 2019 to 2020.
The Biden administration is calling schools the “front line” in the drug epidemic. As such, the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, and the director of the national drug control policy office, Rahul Gupta, issued a joint letter urging teachers to learn how to administer Narcan and for school administrators to purchase units for the schools. This letter will be sent to every state education agency and national education association.
On the whole, young people between the ages of 10 to 19 years-olds have had an increase mortality rate of 109% from July-December of 2019 to the same period in 2020. Experts say a person may take one pill they believe to be an opioid pain medication and if it has fentanyl in it, that would likely be enough to prove fatal.
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