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Dangerous Drug Fentanyl: Sold via Instagram and Snapchat

2022-12-18T16:58:31.013Z


The number of drug-related deaths among American youth is rising sharply. One reason is the drug fentanyl, which is often offered as a painkiller by their own classmates.


In September alone, the Los Angeles County School Board reported seven teenagers who died or were taken to the hospital after taking a supposedly harmless painkiller.

One of them was Melanie, a 15-year-old student at Helen Bernstein High School in Hollywood.

A relative found the girl unconscious in the school toilet after taking a pill said to contain oxycodone and paracetamol.

As it turned out after Melanie's death, the pill had been diluted with the cheap synthetic opioid fentanyl.

She had bought the remedy from a classmate.

A few days later, a student at a neighboring high school was taken to the hospital.

His mother had found the fifteen-year-old unconscious at his desk at home.

The teenager later stated that he had also bought a painkiller from a classmate.

He had no idea that the drug contained fentanyl, which is up to a hundred times more potent than heroin.

While fentanyl deaths among young Californians were considered exceptional until five years ago, state health officials are now consistently reporting adolescents or young adults dying from overdoses.

In other states, too, increasing numbers of students are dying from overdoses - although fewer young Americans are using illegal drugs today than they were a few years ago.

As in the case of the late Melanie, the drugs laced with fentanyl often come from classmates.

“We will not hold young people legally accountable for using illegal drugs and suffering the consequences.

But we want to find the suppliers.

Behind every student offering pills is an adult and a drug ring."

Disguised as supposed medicines

The fact that more and more young Californians are dying from fentanyl is also due to the distribution channels.

Instead of on street corners and in dark alleys, many drug dealers now offer their goods on social media.

The stretched pills are sold through Instagram and Snapchat, often under well-known trade names like Oxycontin, Xanax or Adderall.

If the supposed medicines are not handed over in the schoolyard or university campus, they reach the young customers by courier.

For the years 2019 to 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) registered more than 2,200 fatal overdoses among adolescents in 32 American states - a doubling of the numbers in this period.

About 1800 of them died from illegal fentanyl.

“A single pill can kill”

The numbers in California are particularly alarming.

Already every fifth death in the age group of 15 to 24-year-old residents of the Pacific state was due to fentanyl in 2021, according to data from the California health authorities, the number of deaths has increased sixfold since 2018.

"We don't want to scare anyone.

But it is sadly true that a single pill can be deadly.

We need to talk to our children differently," said epidemiologist Chelsea Shover.

Many parents no longer want to rely on education alone.

In the meantime, they are moving in front of the State Capitol in the capital Sacramento to mobilize congressmen and the governor.

Republican Patterson now proposed that every school have the drug naloxone, an antidote to fentanyl, readily available.

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged more than $480 million to support mentally ill and drug-addicted young Californians.

Legislators in Sacramento, on the other hand, could not bring themselves to tougher penalties for drug dealers, which many Californian parents consider the most effective step against the opioid crisis among young people: last year, politicians rejected the proposal to charge drug dealers with manslaughter or murder after fatal doses of fentanyl away.

Source: faz

All news articles on 2022-12-18

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