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Fight to end opioid deaths reaches classrooms, prisons | Editorial

Sun Sentinel - 4/5/2018

It's easy to be overwhelmed by the figures: Sixty people die in the United States every day from overdosing on opioid pain medication - more than 22,000 souls every year.

The statistics come from the National Safety Council, which also notes that 70 percent of people who abuse prescription pain killers say they got them from a relative or a friend.

A pair of bills working their way through the state Legislature aims to reduce the human toll to manageable proportions by working via two of our public institutions: our schools and our state prisons.

Recently, the Assembly Appropriations Committee overwhelming approved a bill that would require all schools to train school nurses and other personnel to administer opioid antidotes - medications such as naloxone or Narcan which have proven to save lives.

On another front, the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee will consider a bill that requiring prisons to provide an opioid-blocking injection to addicted prisoners who are being released, in hopes of keeping them sober.

In addition, ex-prisoners would also take with them a shot of naloxone to be used if the addiction proves too powerful, or if someone else close to them overdoses.

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In the Garden State, more than 650 people have overdosed this year alone.

The school-based bill, which has multiple sponsors, calls for officials at all schools throughout the state - public, private, charter and others - to chart a policy for administering the antidote for anyone overdosing on school grounds.

It would grant the school nurse, the primary individual responsible for overseeing the program, legal immunity - an important protection. And it would mandate that the lifesaving substance be kept in a place that is both safe and easily accessible.

If you think this bill would put a lot of pressure on already over-burdened school workers, you're right: It would.

But the sad reality is that young people are disproportionately hit by this ugly epidemic, which makes teachers and school nurses the first line of defense.

The second measure under consideration also targets a vulnerable population - people formerly behind bars.

"Relapse and overdose deaths occur at high rates after release from incarceration," says Assemblyman Herb Conaway Jr., a practicing physician and chair of the Assembly Health Committee.

In addition to saving lives, his bill aims to reduce the high recidivism rates among inmates, a tragedy driven by the same drug issues that may have caused them to wind up in prison in the first place.

Naltrexone, the opioid-blocker his bill would require for newly released inmates, has proven useful in at least 30 other states, including neighboring New York and Pennsylvania.

Together, these are modest proposals to contain a massive epidemic. But they hold out the promise of saving lives, one individual at a time.

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