Drug overdoses probed in USC deaths

LOS ANGELES — Some of the nine recent deaths of USC students are potentially linked to drug overdoses, reflecting a growing concern among educators and health officials about rising drug use by collegeage adults and the need for greater mental health services at universities.

Particularly worrisome is that investigators are probing whether any of the USC deaths are connected to tainted drugs — drugs touted as one thing but which actually contain more potent narcotics.

“We all know that people that get drugs on the street have no idea what is in those drugs,” USC President Carol Folt said Wednesday.

Three of the USC deaths were by suicide, according to campus officials. Although Folt would not elaborate on the circumstances of the individual deaths, citing federal student privacy laws, she said USC is working with the Los Angeles Police Department on the other cases and “doubling down” on education and outreach over drug abuse.

No links to contaminated drugs have yet been confirmed, according to sources who spoke to The Times on the condition on anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. Autopsies and toxicology tests are still pending in a number of the deaths.

But in what experts say is the latest wave of the opioid epidemic, the potent narcotic fentanyl has been increasingly showing up in non-opioids like cocaine and ecstasy, the kinds of substances that students may experiment with on a college campus.