Drug’s wide-reaching impact felt in Yuma-area schools
Editor’s Note: Fentanyl has been making headlines both locally and around the country amid a spike in overdoses and arrests. This story is one in a series examining the fentanyl issue and its impact in Yuma County.
Near the end of January, San Luis High School’s auditorium was filled with concerned parents and community members demanding action.
They were scared and concerned. Something new and dangerous that police had warned about just a month prior was taking lives in their community: fentanyl.
They asked police and school officials to take drastic measures. In January alone, 10 people had overdosed in the small border town, including students at San Luis High School.
This isn’t an issue that’s unique to San Luis, though. Communities around Yuma County – and the entire country – have been struggling with fentanyl and its deadly effects.
Since November of 2018, the Yuma Police Department estimates that they’ve responded to about 70
overdoses in Yuma, with seven of those occurring in schools.
‘IT’S NO DIFFERENT THAN THE WAY IT LANDED IN THEIR OWN COMMUNITY’
Fentanyl – and opioid abuse in general – has been a pervasive issue in Yuma, so it’s no surprise that it has found its way into area schools.
And according to estimates from the Yuma Police Department, the overdose victims who they’ve encountered were as young as 13.
Yuma Union High School District Superintendent Gina Thompson believes that what’s going on in schools is simply a reflection of the broader problem in the community.
“To ask the question of how it landed and how it came about in the schools, I think the first thing that people really need to do is understand it’s no different than the way it landed in their own community outside of the schools,” Thompson said.
Despite this, when young people end up getting tangled in a deadly serious issue like fentanyl abuse, emotions can run high and parents can look for someone, anyone to blame.
According to Thompson, fentanyl started popping up in their schools during the spring semester of the 20172018 school year, though not in its current form and mostly through confiscations rather than overdoses occurring.
And YUHSD Communications Director Eric Patten said that back then they weren’t seeing quantities even close to what has been confiscated recently.
“It was more like, a kid had a pill,” he said. “And at the time, you know, we would have to get with SLPD or YPD to find out what exactly the pill was — but we knew it was some sort of opioid and we were hearing about that.”
Now, multiple cases of students and area teenagers carrying thousands of pills have been encountered by the San Luis Police Department.
One incident that garnered national attention occurred in early June when San Luis police confiscated 3,200 pills containing fentanyl from three San Luis High School students.
And despite much of the attention from the media and the public coming near the start of 2019, Patten said that going into fall of 2018, the district was well aware of the issue.
“By December there were some sweeping changes in terms of how we were messaging it out to families or the partnership with law enforcement,” he said. “...(and) by January of ‘19 there was an obvious need to step up that awareness.”
“LIKE A RUSSIAN ROULETTE”
Part of the district’s campaign that they were waging against fentanyl and opioid abuse included presentations by local law enforcement, including Corp. Eric Resendiz of the Yuma Police Department, who during the winter and spring gave a number of talks at middle schools, high schools and at city hall.
During one event similar to those put on at area high schools, at Centennial Middle School, Resendiz dove into the issue and how fentanyl abuse usually plays out in schools.
“The thing is, kids usually are not trying to take fentanyl when they’re overdosing,” said Resendiz to a crowd of Centennial students and families.
He went on to show the pill that has caused much of the chaos that Yuma County has been experiencing this year: the counterfeit M30.
Made to look like a 30-milligram oxycodone pill, it instead contains fentanyl, and due to the potency of the drug, that kind of mix-up can be a deadly one.
Kids have been abusing prescription medications for some time, said Sgt. Lori Franklin with the Yuma Police Department. And according to her, throwing fentanyl into the mix has just made the problem even more deadly.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl can be somewhere between 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, an already strong pain medication.
“They think that they’re taking the oxy product,” said Franklin. “And… it’s kind of like a Russian roulette anymore. Is it the oxy product or is it laced with fentanyl?”
So to help reduce the likelihood of kids eventually being exposed to fentanyl, something that Franklin recommends that all families do is turn in their unused pain medication.
“Once you’re done with that prescription, get rid of it,” she said. “It’s not worth having it around.”
People need to begin approaching how they keep pain medication around the house in the same way they do with firearms, said Franklin, locking them up and making sure that kids can’t get ahold of them.
“Because anymore, it’s killing them, and it’s creating an addiction that is just making it even worse,” she said.
A LIFE-SAVING DRUG
Aside from educating and spreading awareness, to fight fentanyl Yuma Union High School District has also equipped its campuses with AED, or automatic external defibrillator, stations that also have Narcan, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioids and save someone’s life if they’re overdosing.
Since it comes in the form of a nasal spray, the drug is easy to use and can be administered without a certification. YUHSD has training on the drug available for all of its staff.
Yuma police officers also carry Narcan, and Franklin said that it has helped the department a great deal when responding to overdoses.
She said that often the police will arrive at the scene of an overdose before other first responders, and the drug makes sure that they can intervene quickly.
A lot of thought has been put in by administrators as to how schools will react in the event of an overdose — like at Kofa High School, where according to Thompson, a study was performed to make sure that AED stations were placed in the best locations.
“Everything was within a minute-and-a-half or two minutes away from any location on campus, there was an AED and Narcan station,” said Patten.
All school resource officers and health offices on YUHSD campuses also have the drug, according to Patten.
Thompson also said that the district is expanding to have security guards carry it, as well.
AN OVERDOSE IS FAR FROM THE BEGINNING
Some staff in the district has also been going through DITEP, or drug impairment training for educational professionals, which teaches them how to recognize the signs of drug abuse.
“Any new administrators go to that, it’s a mandate,” said Patten. “Nurses, security, some of the SROs (school resource officers) go.”
And according to Patten, drugs have already been confiscated as a result of the training.
This kind of training can also help reduce the chances of kids overdosing, as well. And according to Resendiz, the signs of heavy opioid abuse can be seen long before one actually occurs.
“The thing about people who overdose on drugs, is it’s not something that just started the first day — they (don’t) wake up that day and (say), ‘I think I’m going to overdose on fentanyl,’ right?” said Resendiz in his speech at Centennial Middle School.
Just as one can notice the signs of an overdose like shallow breathing, a change in skin color and an erratic pulse — indicators like extreme weight loss or gain; red, puffy and watery eyes; bad breath and changes in behavior can alert people to potentially dangerous opioid abuse, according to Resendiz.
“They see all these different things about the people they know and they love, and they see them every day,” he said.