These are our children. Let’s get them back.

“Hey, you’re a doctor. Do you know what this is?” another mother asked as she pressed a small yellow pill into my palm. “Where did you find this?” I asked as I examined the pill. “I didn’t. My 4-year-old daughter did that in class,” she replied. “She picked it up off the floor and hid it in her storage compartment all day.” Upon closer inspection, this particular pill turned out to be a vitamin. But the potential for it to be something far more sinister left us both shocked. Our children were safe… for now. Some kids aren’t as lucky.

The topic of opioid overdoses is in the news almost every night. Our proximity to the Mexican border makes Arizona the largest state trafficker of illegally manufactured fentanyl in the country. An opioid typically used to treat severe pain, fentanyl is illegally synthesized by drug cartels to lure, ensnare, and harm our most vulnerable populations. Fentanyl is also a common and elusive co-contaminant of other drugs and is deceptively formulated to mimic popular candies like Smarties or Skittles. These pills, designed to fool an unsuspecting consumer (such as a child), contain a dose of fentanyl that can kill the average American adult 70% of the time. These synthetic pills are easily accessible to our youth through social media such as Tik Tok and Snapchat. In effect, our children are their targets. The Arizona Child Fatality Review Program estimated at least 80 opioid-related deaths between 2021 and 2022 and 132 overdose events in 2023 alone. And since there are no state requirements for overdoses on school campuses to be centrally reported, these numbers are likely underestimates.

So, what should you do as a parent?

I have to admit that the incident in class made me feel uncomfortable. My professional expertise was at odds with my maternal instincts. I knew too much. And our children know too little. What, when, and where could they learn the hard facts of this epidemic without learning it the hard way?

Thanks to a new task force created in partnership with the Arizona Department of Education, these questions are being answered. Launched in May 2024, the School Training and Overdose Preparedness Intelligence Taskforce (STOP-IT) aims to ensure that every child in Arizona is educated about the dangers of synthetic opioids and that staff is trained to use the life-saving opioid overdose medication, naloxone.

The task force is comprised of a diverse group of hand-picked experts in medicine, education, government, and behavioral health. From principals to school counselors to physicians to drug intelligence officers to parents and even students, members have taken on a monumental task: ending opioid overdose deaths and preventing addiction in our children. The 60-plus members serve on a curated slate of subcommittees dedicated to addressing all aspects of the opioid crisis in schools. This includes ensuring that staff and students have naloxone available in all school buildings, creating policies and procedures for school districts to adopt so that staff can administer and train with the drug, developing a statewide school survey to understand barriers to naloxone use, and establishing a statewide overdose reporting system to ensure that school overdoses are tracked at the state level. But at the top of their to-do list is ensuring that students and staff receive standardized, impactful training on the dangers of the illegal drug trade and how to recognize its effects.

I was already prepared to move forward on this issue and was well-versed in the world of medical education and healthcare quality. I was excited to join the task force as chair of the Best Practices for Staff and Student Education STOP-IT initiative. There is still plenty of work ahead of us. The subcommittee is already hard at work meeting with national and local experts and examining the existing curriculum to develop a best practice for training. The subcommittee has identified “must-haves” for the curriculum, such as ensuring age-appropriate (6th through 12th grade) content, being culturally sensitive, being in a modular electronic format without in-person training requirements, being cost-effective, and being easy to implement. Most importantly, the curriculum must include a large number of trackable metrics that can monitor student engagement, product satisfaction, and ultimately the impact on overdose rates. To keep the content relevant, discussions are also underway about engaging social media influencers to promote the STOP-IT message.

Now that the task force meetings are well underway and a statewide survey assessing the status of naloxone readiness in Arizona schools is in the hands of more than 2,000 school leaders, we are beginning to understand the current state of the state. The task force has a robust timeline with plans to implement the curriculum in early 2025.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably a concerned parent from Arizona. That makes this topic very personal. The opioid epidemic is now endemic, and the drugs are equal opportunity destroyers. To assume that overdoses only happen to “bad” kids who buy and sell drugs is a gross misunderstanding of the current state of affairs and a misinterpretation of the science that drives addiction. The real epidemic is about the 12-year-old who goes on Tik Tok looking for a pill to focus on an upcoming test and overdoses on a sadistic fake. It’s about the kid seeking social acceptance who quickly falls victim to peer pressure and falls unconscious more quickly. It’s about kids just like yours.

What can parents do?

The first step is to get educated! The book, Ending the Crisis: Mayo Clinic’s Guide to Opioid Addiction and Safe Opioid Use, is an excellent resource to help both young adults and parents navigate the opioid crisis. Readers will learn:

• How Prescription Opioids Differ from Street Drugs
• How Opioids Change the Brain and Cause Addiction
• Ways to Prevent, Identify, and Treat Opioid Overdose
• Evidence-Based, Successful Treatments for Opioid Addiction
• The role of boundaries, interventions and communication in opioid addiction
• Much more!

The book is filled with poignant and heartfelt testimonies from people who have experienced the opioid epidemic and offers readers hope.

Parents, we need your help. These are our children. Let’s take them back. Remember, it’s never too early to start talking to your kids about drug safety. Kids who have these conversations with their parents are 40-50% less likely to use drugs. And keep the conversation going. You can’t overcommunicate the dangers of drug use in 2024. As parents, we need to stand up, speak out, and take back what’s ours. It’s time to break the drug trade’s grip on our children’s future. It’s time to STOP IT.

For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit azed.gov/stopit

• Krystal Renszel, DO, MS, FACP, Chair, Subcommittee on Student and Staff Education, STOP-IT Task Force
• Holly Geyer, MD, FASAM, Chair, STOP-IT Task Force
• Mike Kurtenbach, co-chair, STOP-IT Task Force

Sources:

• Song for Charlie: Real Talk About Fake Pills (songforcharlie.org)
• Natural High: Fentanyl Toolkit – Information and Resources on Fentanyl (naturalhigh.org)
• Drug Enforcement Agency Operation Prevention: Opioid and Prescription Drugs (operationprevention.com)
• Sold Out Youth Foundation (soldouttv.com)
• DEA: One Pill Can Kill (DEA.gov)
• Community Bridges (communitybridgesinc.org)