{"id":380,"date":"2022-11-10T11:08:30","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T11:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=380"},"modified":"2022-11-10T11:08:36","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T11:08:36","slug":"fentanyl-in-high-school-a-texas-community-grapples-with-the-reach-of-the-deadly-opioid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthynewsusa.com\/?p=380","title":{"rendered":"Fentanyl in High School: A Texas Community Grapples With the Reach of the Deadly Opioid"},"content":{"rendered":"
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KYLE, Texas \u2014 The hallways of Lehman High School looked like any other on a recent fall day. Its 2,100 students talked and laughed as they hurried to their next classes, moving past walls covered with flyers that advertised homecoming events, clubs, and football games. Next to those flyers, though, were posters with a grim message warning students that fentanyl is extremely deadly.<\/p>\n

Those posters weren\u2019t there last school year.<\/p>\n

Right before this school year started, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District, which includes Lehman, announced that two students had died after taking fentanyl-laced pills. They were the first recorded student deaths tied to the synthetic opioid in this Central Texas school district, which has high school campuses in Kyle and Buda, a nearby town. Within the first month of school, two more fatalities were confirmed.<\/p>\n

The reaction from school officials, employees, students, and parents has been intense, mixing heartbreak and terror with anger and action. The community, it seems, is ready to fight back. The school system has prioritized its existing anti-drug educational campaign. Students are wrestling with their risky behaviors and peer pressure. And parents are trying to start difficult conversations about drugs with their children.<\/p>\n

They are \u201ctaking the bull by the horns,\u201d said Tim Savoy, the school district\u2019s chief communications officer.<\/p>\n

But there are also questions about whether those efforts will be enough.<\/p>\n

The overdose problem facing the district, which is just south of Austin and about an hour northeast of San Antonio, mimics a nationwide trend<\/a>. More than 107,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, a record. Most of those deaths \u2014 71,238 of them \u2014 involved fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. The Drug Enforcement Administration has warned<\/a> that fentanyl is increasingly finding its way into \u201cfake prescription pills\u201d that are \u201ceasily accessible and often sold on social media and e-commerce platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The police chief in Kyle, Jeff Barnett, said that\u2019s a problem in his area. \u201cYou could probably find a fentanyl-laced pill within five minutes on social media and probably arrange a meeting within the hour\u201d with a dealer, Barnett said.<\/p>\n

Jeff Barnett, chief of police in Kyle, Texas, says fentanyl-laced pills are easily accessible online. \u201cYou could probably find a fentanyl-laced pill within five minutes on social media and probably arrange a meeting within the hour\u201d with a dealer, Barnett says.(Colleen DeGuzman \/ KHN)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fentanyl threat has made high schoolers more susceptible to getting ahold of the lethal pills. They might believe they are using party drugs that, though illegal, are not \u2014 on their own \u2014 nearly as deadly as fentanyl.<\/p>\n

The kids are \u201cnot intentionally buying fentanyl,\u201d Jennifer Sharpe Potter<\/a>, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at UT Health San Antonio, said in testimony during a September hearing<\/a> before the Texas House of Representatives. They don\u2019t know that it\u2019s in the pills they buy, she added, describing the problem as the \u201cthird wave of the overdose crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventeen-year-old Kevin McConville, a Lehman student who died in August, appears to be one of this wave\u2019s victims. In a video<\/a> the district produced, Kevin\u2019s parents explain with grief heavy in their eyes that after their son\u2019s death, they learned from his friends that he was struggling to sleep. After taking pills he thought were Percocet and Xanax, he didn\u2019t wake up, his parents said.<\/p>\n

Stories like that have led the school district to issue the following warning on its website<\/a>: \u201cFentanyl is here. We need to talk about fentanyl. And fentanyl is deadly.\u201d It\u2019s 100 times as potent as morphine and 50 times as potent as heroin, according to the DEA<\/a>, and 2 milligrams is potentially lethal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The district launched a \u201cFighting Fentanyl\u201d campaign \u2014 which enlists city police and emergency medical services personnel. There\u2019s a \u201cHopeLine<\/a>\u201d to which students can anonymously send information about classmates who may be taking illicit drugs. Starting in sixth grade, students are required to watch a 13-minute video that underscores how dangerous and deadly fentanyl is and explains how to identify when a classmate may be overdosing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re recruiting students to help us be the eyes and ears if they\u2019re at a party or at a friend\u2019s house,\u201d Savoy said.<\/p>\n

The school system also hopes to raise students\u2019 awareness of the risks they face. Any pill \u2014 no matter what it is \u2014 that didn\u2019t come from a pharmacy cannot be trusted: \u201cIt\u2019s like playing Russian roulette,\u201d Savoy said.<\/p>\n

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Since July, four students in the Hays Consolidated Independent School District in Central Texas have died from fentanyl overdoses.(Colleen DeGuzman \/ KHN)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The message may be resonating. Sara Hutson, a Lehman High senior, said sharing over-the-counter pills such as Tylenol and Motrin used to be common, but she no longer considers it safe. Her trust is gone.<\/p>\n

But other students aren\u2019t as cautious. Lisa Peralta shared in a Facebook post in September that her daughter, who is in seventh grade, admitted to eating an \u201canxiety gummy\u201d her friend gave her. \u201cI\u2019m scared because my daughter is a follower,\u201d the Kyle resident wrote. \u201cI just don\u2019t trust that she won\u2019t do it again if she feels pressured.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter how clear the district and parents make their messages, Savoy worries they may never be enough because students are so adventurous. \u201cIt\u2019s just the teenage mindset,\u201d he said. \u201cThey think, \u2018We\u2019re invincible; it\u2019s not going to happen to me.\u2019 But it is happening to us in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the feelings of unease and grief are sometimes palpable. Students have been fighting more at school, said Jacob Valdez, a Lehman sophomore who knew two of the students who died. That might be happening, he added, because \u201ceveryone is just angsty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tension is not limited to middle and high school students. It\u2019s also become very real for parents of elementary school kids, since the DEA warned the public in August about fentanyl-laced pills that look like brightly colored candies<\/a>. The Hays school district is also hanging warning posters geared toward younger students.<\/p>\n

Jillien Brown of Kyle said she is worried about her daughters, 5-year-old Vivian and 7-year-old Scarlett. \u201cWe told them that there\u2019s some scary things going on, that people are getting very sick and they\u2019re dying from taking what they think is candy or medicine,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe use the word \u2018poison,\u2019 so like when Snow White bit the apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the conversation must be ongoing, Brown said, because the day after she talked to her daughters, \u201csome little kid on the bus gave them a candy and they ate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Kyle resident April Munson, a former elementary school teacher, considers it all \u201cgut-wrenching.\u201d She showed her 9-year-old son, Ethan, pictures of the multicolored \u201crainbow fentanyl\u201d pills. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard conversation to have, but hard conversations are often the most important ones,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd, really, you can\u2019t afford to have elephants in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even as parents and the school officials attempt to prevent fentanyl from striking again, another reality check comes.<\/p>\n

Last year, the school district started stocking in every school a supply of the overdose reversal drug naloxone, also known as Narcan. So far this semester, despite all the community has gone through, it has been used to save four more students, Savoy said. In one case, Savoy said, first responders had to use three doses to revive a student \u2014 the fentanyl \u201cwas that strong,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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Student artwork is on display at Lehman High School in Kyle, Texas, in front of its health care department.(Colleen DeGuzman \/ KHN)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n