Wake Up Parents, There’s A Bigger Killer Than COVID.
Beware of the deadly Fentanyl epidemic.
Just last week, six spring breakers including West Point cadets overdosed on fentanyl laced cocaine. They were college students from New York vacationing in Fort Lauderdale on Spring break.
In Oregon, another tragic story played out. A 6 month old baby was found in a motel room strapped in his stroller for four days. All the while, his 28 year old mother lay dead in the same room from a fentanyl overdose. The baby was barely alive when rescued but went on to make a good recovery.
The victims in emergency rooms are getting younger and younger. 12-year-old San Jose girl, Dalilah took part of a pill she believed was painkiller Percocet. It also has a side effect of creating feelings of relaxation, reduced anxiety, and increased pleasure.
But her pill was laced with fentanyl , causing her to have a fatal overdose. Who was her drug dealer? A 16 year old.
Babies are dealing out drugs to babies. What’s happening to our youth?
Parents, before you think, “My kid would never do that.”, Think again! All the parents of kids who died from an overdose thought the very same thing. They had no idea their kids were taking drugs, because kids can be very good at hiding the fact.
Getting drugs for teens is as easy as sending a text on Snapchat.
In Colorado, two juvenile girls messaged a drug dealer on Facebook Messenger to buy 2 Percocet pills for $40. They took the fentanyl laced pill to their high school the next morning, where they shared it with a third juvenile female who overdosed and died.
Tragic headlines like these have sadly become commonplace. Young people are dropping like flies with black teens begin hit the hardest.
First of all, what Is Fentanyl?
60 years ago pharmaceutical Fentanyl was created as a potent painkiller to treat severe pain, especially after surgery and for advanced stage cancer. But since then it has transformed from painkiller to plain killer.
Drug dealers add illicitly manufactured fentanyl to other drugs. They do this to increase their profit margin and keep users hooked.
According to Sarah Mars, who studies drug addiction and policy at the University of California San Francisco. “ Fentanyl is cheaper than heroin and fiercely addictive. There’s a shortage of heroin and a growing supply of cheap fentanyl from China and Mexico. This explains why dealers lace their drugs with fentanyl.”
Shocking Fentanyl statistics
Fentanyl overdoses have killed more adults 18 to 45 in the United States since 2020 than COVID, car accidents, and even suicides.(CDC)
Data from Families Against Fentanyl suggests that one person dies from an overdose every 8.5 minutes.
“The risk with fentanyl isn’t just addiction or other side effects — it’s simply death.”, said Michael Barnett, a professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. 2 paramedics overdosed just by performing CPR. Another cop collapsed when he was exposed to air borne Fentanyl while doing a car search .
Young people are purchasing what they think are OxyContin, Percocet, Marijuana or Xanax pills via social media, but drug dealers are selling fake pills with the cheaper and a more deadly fentanyl. It is odorless, tasteless, and colorless, hence users are completely clueless.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), nearly half of all counterfeit pills tested contained a lethal dose of fentanyl.
People are literally playing Russian roulette every time they take a pill. They should assume that any pill they buy on the internet, or on the streets and not directly from a pharmacy could contain a lethal dose of fentanyl.
This includes illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin, meth, as well as prescription medications such as Xanax, Oxycodone.
What’s driving the Opioid epidemic?
Experts say the stress of the pandemic has led more young people to experiment with drugs. Social pressures, boredom, anxiety and frustrations are driving teens to dabble in drugs.
Legalizing weed has not solved America’s drug problem. There is an alarming trend of increasingly younger students bringing the drug to school, impacting middle school students in higher numbers than those seen before legalization.
According to the NIDA’s annual ‘Monitoring The Future’ survey, about 10 % of 8th graders, 26% of 10th graders, and 37 % of 12th graders reported using marijuana in the last year.
Teens are developing more positive attitudes about using marijuana, with 71 % of high school seniors saying they do not view regular marijuana smoking as very harmful.
Marijuana, while considered relatively harmless when compared to other hard drugs, can be a gateway drug leading to harder and more addictive drugs.
Research shows that the vast majority of high school students who do use other drugs used cannabis first. Similarly, a 2015 study analyzed lifetime cannabis users and concluded that nearly 50% of participants went on to take other “illicit drugs.”
According to the NIH, most people who develop severe problems with drugs, such as cocaine, meth, and heroin, had early experiences with marijuana before trying these other drugs.
If these hard drug users had not taken marijuana in the first place, they would not have been lured into a false sense of security around drug use, and so would never have progressed to other, more harmful substances.
Plus when people begin using cannabis while their young brains are still developing, which can be into their early 20s, it can change the reward system of their brains. Other drugs like heroine, meth and cocaine may in turn, become more appealing.
It’s important to note that at the same time, many people who use marijuana will not go on to use these harder substances. None the less, why take the risk to begin with?
Addiction begins with a single choice and then it becomes a disease which significantly alters the trajectory of a young person’s life.
It leaves in it’s wake mass casualties — a trail of broken families grieving over stolen futures. Worse the cycle perpetuates, negatively impacting innocent future generations down the line.
Parents can be the biggest protection against drugs in their kid’s lives. We need to keep talking to them about the dangers of drugs, so that they will say “No” without hesitation if it’s offered to them.
Kids also need healthy coping mechanisms so they don’t turn to drugs, alcohol or self harm when faced with difficult situations. No high is worth more than their life.
No drug is safe. Just one pill can kill. Just one bad decision can extinguish a bright future and wreck an entire family.
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