After student's death, LA schools to carry overdose antidote
The Los Angeles Unified School District will provide all its schools with a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Unified School District will provide all its schools with a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, after at least seven teenagers overdosed on pills likely laced with fentanyl in recent weeks, including a 15-year-old girl who died on a high school campus.
“We have an urgent crisis on our hands,” district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said at a news conference Thursday.
Carvalho said doses of naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, will be supplied to all schools from kindergarten through 12th grade in the next few weeks — about 1,400 schools in total. The county public health department will provide the medication for free.
The nation’s second-largest school district will also begin an educational campaign that includes parent outreach and “peer-to-peer” counseling to warn students about the dangers of fentanyl.
