Some school districts across the Metro are now equipped with Narcan

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - Local schools are arming themselves with a potentially life-saving medicine.

Some schools across the Metro are now equipped with Narcan, which is something that can reverse an opioid overdose.

With the fentanyl crisis, there is also a rise in adolescent overdoses.

The rise in teen drug overdoses is spurring St. Louis based PreventEd into action.

Community outreach coordinator Stacie Zellen says state funding has allowed the organization to distribute Narcan across Missouri.

“The way that we’re seeing people exposed to fentanyl is unintentional or maybe unknowing exposures,” Zellen says.

Zellen says adolescents are running into fentanyl, often through counterfeit pills.

“You can imagine a young person thinks they are buying or maybe taking someone’s Xanax or they’re taking someone’s oxycodone, they have no idea that it’s laced with a substance that’s very deadly,” Zellen says.

That’s what happened to a Plano, Texas teen who died last month after taking a pain pill laced with fentanyl.

So far this year, PreventEd has distributed 700 Narcan units to districts across the state.

Zellen says 200 of those Narcan units have gone to more than 20 school districts across the St. Louis metro.

One of the districts is the Parkway School District.

Parkway North High School nurse Dana Lindenmann says Narcan is available at each Parkway school.

“We were interested because there’s been a rise in opioid use and abuse throughout the community and we really wanted to focus on safety in our schools,” Lindenmann says.

Lindenmann says the district has never had to use the medication before, but would rather be safe, than sorry

“Just like we want to have things like Band-Aids and AED’s available for prevention in our schools, we wanted to have other tools available like Narcan as well so if something were to happen both during and after school, we would have that there in order to help save a life,” Lindenmann says.

If a school district is interested in Narcan, you can contact acampbell@prevented.org.

There is also free training on distributing it here.

Copyright 2023 KMOV. All rights reserved.