“Don’t do drugs,” they always said. But why? While growing up, my drug education experience was scattered. Aside from a few days during two-week Teen Talk sessions — which only took place once in middle school and once in high school — substance use and addiction were scarcely discussed. When we did touch on those topics, the message was simply to stay away from drugs.
When a student at my high school unexpectedly died from fentanyl poisoning last year, the alarming rise in drug overdoses was brought to everyone’s attention. Through talking with his family to put together a feature package about the fentanyl crisis, I realized the severity of the problem: young individuals with bright futures are being killed with just one pill.
Especially with the convenience of social media, drug poisoning has become a leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. In 2021, 107,622 Americans died of drug overdoses, with 66% of those deaths related to synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and is often mixed with other substances — with and without the users’ knowledge — to increase euphoric effects. Merely two milligrams of fentanyl, about 10 to 15 grains of table salt, is considered a lethal dose.
Just a couple of months ago, the California Department of Public Health alerted school leaders that brightly-colored fentanyl, dubbed “rainbow fentanyl,” has become a new trend in the country to make the highly addictive and potentially deadly drug look like candy to children and young people. Fentanyl has been seized in all forms — pills, powder, and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk.
To combat this issue, many groups began raising awareness in their community, organizing events to warn the public of the dangers. Local high school senior Cherise Wong took a different approach: she provided a science-based drug education to middle school students to empower them to make healthy and wise choices.
Reflecting on her own experiences, Wong noted how the only drug education she received in elementary and middle school was a “say no to drugs”-themed spirit week.
“We would have a spirit week with fun themes tangentially related to drug-free messages, but they didn’t really teach you the ‘why,’” Wong said. “Just by going through these spirit weeks, kids don’t understand exactly why drugs can be dangerous and how pressing this opioid epidemic has been. It doesn’t really leave an impact on you.”
As a result, Wong founded the Youth Drug and Addiction Education Initiative (YDAEI), a nonprofit organization for high school students to discuss addiction and overdose with younger kids to help them develop their perspectives on drug use. This summer, they reached over 100 middle school students with two sessions covering topics about the brain’s reward system, counterfeit drugs, recognizing a drug overdose, and stories of real overdose cases.
“Drugs can come up as early as middle school, so we wanted to get the message across early,” Wong said. “The main focus of our initiative is really prevention — to not have more people spiral into addiction or another drug overdose story.”
There is no single, clear solution to the surge in drug overdoses, but any effort to reverse the situation would help. As a student who also felt a lack of drug education in schools, I hope that initiatives like the YDAEI will be able to support teenagers in making informed, safe decisions when faced with difficult choices and peer pressure.
Until an overdose happened so close to me, I never realized the importance and urgency of the crisis. So before it’s too late, know the science, know the stories, know the “why.”
Grace Wu is a senior at Carlmont High School in Belmont. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.
(3) comments
Thanks for an informative newsletter, Ms. Wu. Congrats to community groups and students for taking a lead. Despite your/our best efforts at education, there will still be overdoses. Perhaps a lesson, or two, in how to safely treat someone who has overdosed… perhaps providing, and showing how to administer, naloxone…
Terence,
Please sit down before you read on. I agree with your summation of drug problems mentioned by Ms. Wu in her excellent Student News Column today. As I have mentioned before, when not talking politics you have some useful info. I think this is the third time we have agreed in the past two years. The first was on a rent control issue if I remember right, the second was discussing garlic bread and now this.
Now I don’t know how many people witness overdoses on a regular basis or live in high drug-use areas, but for those that do and are willing to get involved, shouldn’t they be given naloxone to have on hand? Or do we have naysayers that will say having easy access to naloxone would empower drug users to entertain more risk? Do these naysayers prefer potential death of overdosers? In CA, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the preferred approach, since CA is so easily willing to kill the unborn (and the just born?) via abortion. Perhaps a follow up column by Ms. Wu (not for the abortion part, but for the easier access to naloxone)...
And Taffy, my friend, I’m positive we’ve agreed more than three times. If LTE’s weren’t majority politically-related, I’m sure we’d find plenty of common ground. BTW, in regards to garlic bread, the fast and easy way… Costco has (not sure if currently in stock) a garlic spread and seasoning mix - perfect for more than garlic bread… and for upcoming Thanksgiving feasts.
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