The War To Save Our Children

With the constant reports on daily news channels and their websites, and parents on high alert, a silent war has begun. Rainbow-colored drugs have become a familiar image to those who are aware of the ongoing danger but, to many children, these colorful pills look like they’re candy! With the upcoming holiday rapidly approaching and death rates skyrocketing, according to Republican Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, “’every mom in the country’ is worried that their children will get ahold of rainbow-colored fentanyl.” In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released a statement on August 30^th, “warning parents about an ‘alarming emerging trend’ of rainbow-colored fentanyl pills targeted toward children”. DEA Administrator Anne Milgram stated that these brightly colored pills and sometimes powder are a “deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.”

Because of the continuous rise of fentanyl overdoses in young people, schools are beginning to buy naloxone. Naloxone is a “medicine used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose”. The Los Angeles Unified School District was the first to announce, on September 22, that they would be carrying naloxone in the nurse’s office for all K-12 schools. The announcement came “after several suspected overdoses last month, with one juvenile dying at Bernstein High School in Hollywood”. The juvenile was Melanie Ramos, a fifteen-years-old, who, with a classmate, bought “a pill containing fentanyl from another youth, believing that it was the prescription painkiller Percocet”. 

But that brings to question what fentanyl is. 

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid—which is a drug that was originally created to help treat pain. This drug is added to other drugs in order to give the users a better high. Fentanyl is often added to “heroin to increase its potency, or to be disguised as highly potent heroin.” Nowadays, fentanyl has been discovered in weed and other drugs, making the entire operation of buying drugs way more dangerous and deadly. The main issue with this additive is that many of the users don’t know that the drug they are buying has been laced with it—”which often results in overdose deaths”.

The White House has responded with the Biden-Harris Administration announcing New Actions and Funding to Address the Overdose Epidemic and Support Recovery. While this is good news, it also brings attention to the fact that people have been rallying for President Biden to bring action and attention to this for the past year. With most fentanyl coming from Mexico, “the mother’s group, Lost Voices of Fentanyl, which has more than 19,000 members on Facebook, argues that the Biden administration has not done enough to stop fentanyl from being brought across the border, or to raise awareness of its danger”. The mothers state that they would like President Biden to respond to the fentanyl crisis with the same severity he responded to COVID. 

In 2021, the U.S. surpassed a record 100,000 overdose deaths—which was more than any previous year. For now, parents will have to watch their children closely.