LA district to supply all schools with naloxone after 7 teens overdose on opioids



Following seven teen overdoses in the past month, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced on Thursday that all its schools will carry medication to reverse opioid overdoses.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho called the county’s opioid epidemic an “urgent crisis,” the Associated Press reported.

Carvalho stated that all schools within the district from kindergarten through 12th grade would be provided with naloxone, also known under the brand name Narcan, within the next few weeks. The county public health department will provide the medication at no cost to the district.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second-largest district in the nation, with approximately 1,400 schools.

“Research shows that the availability of naloxone along with overdose education is effective at decreasing overdoses and death — and will save lives,” Carvalho said. “We will do everything in our power to ensure that not another student in our community is a victim to the growing opioid epidemic. Keeping students safe and healthy remains our highest priority.”

In addition to providing the schools with the medication, Carvalho announced that the district would launch an educational campaign about the dangers of fentanyl.

According to police, at least seven teenagers have overdosed in the past month from pills that were likely laced with fentanyl.

The most recent overdose occurred Saturday morning, when a 15-year-old boy was found unconscious by his mother at home. The boy is expected to recover.

Authorities are investigating whether the pills the boy took were the same ones that resulted in the fatal overdose of Melanie Ramos, who lost consciousness in the restroom at a Hollywood high school on September 13.

On Tuesday, L.A. Police Chief Michel Moore told the city Police Commission that the girl and her friend purchased a pill they believed was the prescription painkiller Percocet from a classmate. The two girls shared the pill in the high school bathroom and lost consciousness.

One teen woke up later that evening and attempted to wake Ramos, but she was unresponsive. Authorities reported that the pill, unknown to the girls, contained fentanyl.

Earlier that day and less than a half-mile away, paramedics responded to a call involving two teens involved in a possible overdose. The teens are believed to be students from the same high school.

Last week, police arrested two boys, ages 15 and 16, for selling drugs, including the ones responsible for Ramos’ death.

Los Angeles police are determined to find the supplier of the pills. Police Chief Moore described the two teenage boys as “simply pawns that are being used by adults and by drug trade organizations.”

Overdose a leading cause of death for Fort Bragg soldiers



An alarming new exposé from Rolling Stone highlights the fact that the U.S. military is not immune to the nation’s ongoing opioid epidemic.

Through casualty reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Rolling Stone found that a total of 109 soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg, active and reserve, lost their lives in 2020 and 2021. Only four of the deaths occurred in overseas combat operations.

Fort Bragg, located in North Carolina south of Raleigh, is one of the largest military bases in the world and is the headquarters of several of the Army’s commands.

After suicide, accidental overdose is the leading cause of death at Fort Bragg. A total of 21 deaths in the two years ending December 2021 can likely to attributed to drug overdoses, according to Rolling Stone.

The exposé highlights the story of Matthew Disney, who was a 20-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Bragg. Disney was found dead along with fellow radarman Joshua Diamond in the Fort Bragg barracks. Military investigators informed Disney’s mother, Racheal Bowman, that he had ingested an imitation Percocet, a prescription painkiller. The cause of death was acute fentanyl intoxication.

Rolling Stone found that at least 14, and as many as 30, Fort Bragg soldiers have died in this way since the start of 2020: “quietly, in their barracks, in their bunks, in a parked car, or somewhere off-post, from no outwardly apparent cause.”

“All these deaths are happening in the same way, and no one is talking about it,” Bowman told Rolling Stone. “It’s all very secretive. It’s all swept under the rug.” She adds, “This is obviously a problem. How is it that nobody knows about it?”

Rolling Stone also obtained the casualty reports for every U.S. soldier across the entire Army who died in 2021. The documents show that of 505 total deaths, 33 were confirmed overdoses. This number “would make overdose a leading cause of death among American soldiers,” behind suicide, illness, and accidents, but well ahead of homicides and combat fatalities. Rolling Stone notes that there were also 27 cases in which death resulted from “undetermined” causes, at least several of which were likely overdoses.

The opioid crisis has affected the military at all levels. Earlier this year, five cadets at West Point — the institution tasked with training the next generation of Army leadership — were treated for overdosing on fentanyl while on spring break. All the cadets survived.

Throughout America, 56,516 people died from overdosing on synthetic opioids like fentanyl in 2020.

Overdose rates up 700% in Oregon after the state decriminalized the possession of hard drugs



Overdose rates in the state of Oregon rose by 700% after voters in the state approved a ballot measure to decriminalize all hard drugs.

Voters in the state of Oregon voted to decriminalize all hard drugs in the pursuit of encouraging those struggling with drug addiction to seek medical help. The measure, referred to as Ballot Measure 110, was the first of its kind in the U.S. and went into effect in February of 2021 after being approved by the public the year before.

Ballot Measure 110 made it so that it was no longer a felony or misdemeanor of any kind to possess drugs in the state of Oregon. At most, people carrying hard drugs are subject to a maximum fine of $100 which can be waived if the person receiving the citation calls a public hotline and receives a free health assessment.

If a person is found to be carrying a “personal amount” of drugs like heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine at most, they will receive a $100 fine.

Of the $300 million that was meant to be allocated to public health resources to fight addiction, only $40 million has been dispersed.

The Daily Mail reported that Ballot Measure 110 has largely had an inverse effect and has led not to more people seeking treatment but to more drug-related deaths and the proliferation of hard drug use throughout Oregonian communities.

Republican state official Lily Morgan said, “We have overdoses increasing at drastic rates.”

Morgan said, “In my community, [there has been] a 700% increase in overdoses and a 120% increase in deaths.”

Shemia Fagan, the Oregonian Secretary of State, said that Oregon residents approved Ballot Measure 110 to “improve the lives of people, to improve our communities.”

Fagan said, “When the voters of Oregon passed Measure 110, we did so because it was a change of policy in Oregon to improve the lives of people, to improve our communities, and in the years since, we haven’t seen that play out.”

She concluded, “Instead, in many communities in Oregon, we’ve seen the problem with drug addiction get worse.”

Steve Allen, Oregon’s behavioral health director, acknowledged that there has been a “dramatic” increase in overdoses and overdose deaths, but he attributed much of these to an influx of methamphetamine laced with fentanyl.

Allen indicated a belief that if public health resources received enough funding and support, then overdose deaths would decrease as the state’s drug problem begins to improve.

He said, “Getting these resources out to the community is incredibly important — not just the harm reduction resources, but people who can support folks who are at risk for overdose.”

Drug Spike From Lockdowns And Open Borders Is Killing And Maiming Millions Of Americans

We need to end Covid measures that have provoked the kinds of social and economic dysphoria that contributed to the surge of overdose deaths.