Fentanyl Poisoning Deaths Are Preventable
Unsuspecting young people are taking one pill and dying in growing numbers. A safe nasal spray called Narcan could save their lives, but the public is unaware of the risk and the remedy.
My older daughter’s childhood friend died at the age of 14 from a single pill she purchased on the internet and ate in her bedroom.
Ever since then, I’ve been stunned by how few people know that most of the overdose deaths in the country in the past few years are caused by fentanyl poisoning. I refer to it as poisoning because that’s what it is: Unsuspecting college kids, high school students, and party goers buy what they think is Adderall, pain killers, or coke, but it’s laced with fentanyl, the smallest amount of which can kill. Their peers think they’re just drunk and passing out, so they don’t get help in time. Even if they do, school officials or EMTs who arrive on the scene often don’t recognize the signs of fentanyl poisoning, so they don’t administer Narcan (drug name naloxone), a safe nasal spray that’s available over the counter.
Today I want to encourage everyone who reads this to talk to their friends, their kids, their parents, and their local school officials about the staggering, preventable numbers of deaths from fentanyl poisoning in the U.S.
Anyone with a kid in college should send them Narcan, which can be purchased online or at your local pharmacy without a prescription. Anyone who goes out to clubs or bars regularly should carry naloxone with them. Anyone who loves someone who sometimes does recreational drugs should have Narcan or some other brand of naloxone in their home. Every first aid kit should include naloxone.
Having Narcan on hand isn’t enough, of course, because the drug supply simply isn’t safe. You can’t buy Adderall from a stranger, or take a pill given to you by a friend. You can’t experiment with coke on a whim. Because you’re risking your life, every time.
So few people know how big this problem is, or how easy it is to save lives. Recently when a friend mentioned that another friend took coke at a party and I said, “I hope he had Narcan and fentanyl testing strips,” he shrugged like I was being an uptight mom again. I mention fentanyl to another friend and she thought I’d fallen prey to the latest wave of anti-drug hysteria. The reality of fentanyl poisoning has nothing to do with the scare tactics we remember from years ago. This isn’t about addiction or overdoing it. It’s about a threat that can kill someone who simply had no idea how dangerous the drug supply in our country has become.
I’m sorry to make today’s post such a downer. I’ve been wanting to write about this since my daughter’s friend died in 2021, but it felt like swerving out of my lane. Today I just want as many people as possible to educate themselves on this deadly epidemic and how we can prevent more deaths:
The Fentanyl Epidemic: What You Need to Know to Save Lives
Thanks for reading. My regular Ask Polly column will publish tomorrow.
Polly
Hey, paramedic here. I won't speak for the whole country, but it's not just fentanyl. We are getting a lot of fentanyl mixed with xylazine. Fentanyl is an opioid and shows the classic symptoms of pinpoint pupils, slowed breathing, and difficult to arouse. With xylazine, they will get extremely dilated pupils instead of the classic pinpoint, which can make it hard to figure out what's happening (and narcan does not reverse the sedative effects of xylazine).
Fentanyl poisoning causes respiratory depression and eventually respiratory failure. In addition to narcan, learn rescue breathing (taught in all CPR classes).
Even if you give someone narcan, they still need emergency care. The synthetic opiates, like fentanyl, can last longer than one dose of narcan. Call 911, be honest about what happened, we are here to help.
Thank you, Polly, for talking about this important issue. It's true that Naloxone can save lives, and the more we talk about illicit drug poisoning, the more we reduce the stigma around drug use and educate people to the dangers of the illicit supply. My son died in August of 2022. He was 25 years old and had just graduated from college. He had taken meth and possibly fentanyl. We'll never know if he meant to take the fentanyl, or if the meth was contaminated with fentanyl. We do know that he also had benzodiazepine in his system, and this is the newest drug health scare. These powerful sedatives are being added to other drugs and people aren't even aware. Like opioids, benzos also depress the respiratory system, but (tragically) don't respond to Naloxone. Kids these days are facing dangers that unheard of in our generation. It's truly frightening. My condolences for the loss of your daughter's young friend. My heart is completely shattered, as are the hearts of hundreds of parents I know who have lost children this way.