Officials with the Los Angeles Unified School District are now allowed to carry supplies of Narvan nasal spray to class in an effort to save people being afflicted by an opioid overdose, explained a report from area officials.
This past Tuesday, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho reportedly explained to the school board via a message that a recently updated policy coming into the district is going to allow students to carry the anti-overdose medicine with them at a time when the smuggling of deadly fentanyl by the drug cartels through the southern border of the United States hits an all-time peak.
This Narcan, “cannot be used to get high, is not addictive and does not have any effect on a person if there are no opioids in their body,” Carvalho stated to the members of the board, expressed a report from The Los Angeles Times.
Carvalho went on to state that the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health “supports a clarification” for the L.A. Unified policy “that would allow students to be able to carry Narcan in schools,” going on to add that officials would put out another update on the policy bulletin soon.
The existing district policy on giving Narcan that was issued by officials this past year expressed that the medicine “must be kept at the school in a secure location accessible to designated school personnel.”
The Times reported that school board member Nick Melvoin stands in support of the policy update.
“Narcan has the power to save lives and I’ve been working to expand its access to everyone in our school communities, including students themselves,” stated Melvoin. “But the increased use of Narcan as a life-saving measure underscores the drug crisis that’s being brought to our schools.”
“We must do more to address the root causes of this crisis and that starts with education and more support for our youth,” he went on.
Just last year, one report highlighted that 92% of kids who died due to drug overdoses for 2021 ended up testing positive for fentanyl in their system within Los Angeles County, with 31 strictly related to the extremely lethal opioid.
Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration explained that last December the agency was able to seize more than enough fentanyl over the course of 2022 to kill every single citizen of America.
Officials stated that the DEA has taken in well over 50.6 million fake prescription pills which had been dosed with fentanyl, along with well over 10,000 pounds of straight fentanyl powder.
Those totals amount to well over 379 million lethal doses of the drug, which is more than enough to kill all 333 million people in the United States.
