A fact of life for American teens are disaster drills that prepare us for earthquakes, fires, and active shooters. At BOHS, this preparedness includes the ubiquitous red backpacks stored in every classroom on campus.

These red “disaster” bags carry resources to potentially save a student’s life in the event of a crisis. Included in each pack: a first aid kit, flashlight, light sticks, gloves, blanket, feminine pads, batteries, whistles, a safety vest, and “multi use bar,” among other potentially useful items for a disaster or shelter-in-place scenario. 

However, there is an essential life-saving tool that is not present in the bags: naloxone. 

The medicine, better know by its brand name Narcan, is an easy-to-administer nasal spray which quickly reverses an opioid overdose by blocking the effects of opiates on the brain and restoring breathing to the victim. 

Studies by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have proven the effectiveness of Narcan: 99% of people who received 8 mg, and 99.2% of those who received 4 mg, of intranasal naloxone survived an opioid overdose.

The unfortunate reality is that 1,144 teenagers die each year from fentanyl-related overdoses.  In 2022, 22 14- to 18-years old died in the U.S. each week. And in Orange County, opioid overdoses amongst teens rose from six in 2019, to 20 in 2022, with one high school, Dana Hills, experiencing five student overdose deaths between 2019 and 2024. 

One of the most highly-addictive and most often abused drugs is the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which depresses respiratory functions and the nervous system. The drug, similar to morphine “but 50 to 100 times more potent,” is frequently mixed with other drugs, like heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and MDMA. In 2023 the drug was attributed to 74,702 deaths in the U.S., with 5,942 of these deaths occurring in California. 

This tragic prevalence and unpredictability of overdoses — happening in homes, in unhoused communities, and in schools — resulted in the signing into law of Senate Bill 10, otherwise known as Melanie’s Law, on Oct. 13, 2023 by California governor Gavin Newsom. 

The law is named after Melanie Ramos, a 15-year old student who lost her life to a fentanyl overdose in a Hollywood High School restroom in 2022.  The law encourages “county offices of education to establish a County Working Group on Fentanyl Education in Schools, as provided, for the purposes of outreach, building awareness, and collaborating with local health agencies regarding fentanyl overdoses” and requires “the State Department of Education to curate and maintain on its internet website, among other things, informational materials containing awareness and safety advice, for school staff, pupils, and parents or guardians of pupils, on how to prevent an opioid overdose.” 

Overdose deaths can be prevented with “outreach, building awareness, and collaborating with local health agencies,” but also with wider access to the life-saving medicine, Narcan.

It is vital then that in addition to educating BOHS’s staff and student body about drug addiction, that BOHS also stocks Narcan in its disaster preparedness bags.

Currently, campus-wide, there are only eight boxes total, each stored at the eight AED locations. 

Increasing our supply of Narcan is possible.  According to Natalie Deporto, BOUSD nurse, BOHS participates in the Naloxone Distribution Project which supplies approved schools with free Narcan, with opportunities to request more, if needed. 

BOHS should take advantage of this opportunity to increase its available supply of Narcan because having this life-saving medicine in every classroom, in every red backpack, we can ensure the safety of every child on campus.

Narcan only works for the first three to five minutes of an overdose, so it needs to be administered immediately. Having to run to an AED location if an overdose occurs may result in a preventable death.

Narcan needs to be within reach of every student, teacher, staff member, and administrator on the BOHS campus. This can be achieved if we know we can reach into any disaster preparedness bag and find the life-saving medicine.

The 1,670 students at BOHS are currently protected by fencing, Lock-Bloks on classroom doors, and AEDs, but what’s missing is an adequate supply of an essential resource to protect our students from the ever-growing dangers of drug overdoses.