The presentation on the prevalence and current and present dangers of fentanyl at the Pacific Palisades American Legion Post this evening was absolutely eye-opening and bone chilling. A true Halloween’s event.
As always, I want to raise the alert level to the danger posed to the public. This is in red flag territory and much needless suffering can be prevented with a proactive prevention approach.
We will perhaps have to wait until these elections are behind us, but we need to scale and rapidly execute public awareness at the middle and high school level about the lethal nature of fentanyl in all its disguises, being currently easily available to school kids.
Lt. Glenn Walsh of LASD spelled out that these drugs are readily available to school kids in all schools and that teenage experimentation could lead to death at the very first exposure. What looks like “harmless fun” could easily turn out to be anything but that.
My recommendation to Glenn was that LASD work with LAUSD to design a prevention training video that is mandatory viewing for all grade levels that experts deem appropriate.
It used to be such trainings were done in person by cops, in classrooms. Labor shortages, budget cuts, and the concomitant explosive scale of the problem suggest that a standardized video training with teacher facilitation might be the fastest way to go to prevent needless death and suffering.
Harden the targets. Give kids the information they need to protect themselves. Maybe time to bring back the “Just Say No” campaign. I’m pretty positive that there will be no shortage of celebrity influencers who would be will be willing to support this effort and raise the public relations appeal to such a campaign.
Thanks for inviting us and elevating the issues to community awareness Jim [Cragg, Post 283 Commander]. Thanks for training us and for your service Glenn!
Krishna Thangavelu, Ph.D.
Glen Walsh spoke about the dangers of fentanyl and the problems with education and enforcement.
I wonder if our schools receive a supply of Narcan in the event some young person took the drug. This medication revives the person if given very quickly to the person. This should already be on campus but not sure if they have received their supply or when will they get it. It’s critical to have this at each school. I understand it’s not a prescription is needed.
it seems that there are highly inconsistent practices being adopted on the issue of making naloxone available. I wrote yesterday that online pharmacies such as express scripts, Amazon, target etc will not dispense Bali one without a prescription. The most bizarre thing we experienced was our kids’ pediatric doctor in Pacific Palisades refusing to write a prescription for it because she felt that “parents don’t know how to use naloxone properly”. This is even more bizarre than the pharmacist at CVS on Wilshire Blvd telling me that he cannot sell me Naloxone without a prescription, despite me showing him what the CDHP website says. It’s just astounding to see how a well meaning campaign such as making Naloxone widely and easily available to combat this opioid crisis is being diluted by practitioners’ ignorance or personal beliefs/interpretations.