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Steps to Stopping the Opioid Epidemic: Lessons from NCE
The session I most wanted to attend at the National Conference on Education was on addressing opioid abuse. It did not disappoint as the presenter, Dr. Ember Conley provided not just a lot of information I didn’t know but also tangible steps that communities can take. She also gave a lot of references for books and movies that are now on my reading/ watching list for the week.
Opiates are not just a rural, poor district problem.
She started with a story about two eighth-grade students who died from a drug overdose. This was in a very affluent community in Utah. One new thing I learned today was that Utah has the fourth-highest rate of overdoes in the nation. A second surprising fact was that the students had gotten these drugs from someone who had bought a synthetic opioid eight times stronger than heroin LEGALLY over the Internet. The drug is illegal now, but it’s too late for the 50 people who died.
Advice #1 : Track your kids’ debit card use
The sad story is that parents who had gotten their kids debit cards to teach them some responsibility never considered that they would use those cards to buy drugs on the Internet that could kill them. Seriously, who would think that?
