As the fentanyl crisis rages on, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, is partnering with the Boerne Independent School District to target the youths disproportionately impacted by the street-sale of the substance.
With the prevalence of fentanyl in street drugs skyrocketing, as the Drug Enforcement Agency stated 40 percent of confiscated narcotics tested positive for fentanyl, and the Centers for Disease Control identifying fentanyl as the leading cause of death in Americans aged 18 to 45, Roy is taking a strong stance and working to get the message out there: Don’t take medication that isn’t prescribed to you from a doctor.
“It’s the number one cause of death in 18- to 45-year-olds,” Roy told The Star. “That’s obviously a young cohort that shouldn’t be dying.”
The U.S. representative said children are being targeted through social media on apps like TikTok to purchase black-market prescription medication that could be laced with fentanyl. He noted that some of the laced drugs are done by accident in facilities that produce several drugs with little quality control while others may be nefariously laced.
Roy said young people purchasing a Xanax to relax after a stressful week or uppers to help get through finals week can no longer be certain that the seemingly harmless one-off purchase of medication from a friend won’t kill them.
To combat this trend, Roy produced a video with BISD to play in classrooms across the district warning students about the dangers and targeting children before they gain access to recreational use of drugs or prescription medication.
Rick Goodrich, a former DEA agent who now serves as the school district’s chief of safety and security, noted the severe impacts a small amount of the drug can have.
“It shouldn’t be a death sentence, and that’s why we have this sense of emergency,” Goodrich said, noting a 240-pound linebacker from Hays County who overdosed on fentanyl when taking what he thought was a safe, prescribed medication from a friend. “It’s like playing roulette now.”
This, however, points to a larger problem of medication use that Roy admitted is nuanced and complicated. He said he would like to see a change in the general impost to go straight to medication and a push toward resolving the underlying issues, but he said this idealistic view is further complicated because limiting prescription use can push those who actually need medication to get it off the street if doctors stop prescribing it.
“Our superintendent Dr. (Tom) Price, board President Rich Sena, Mr. Goodrich and myself were at a recent roundtable discussion with Congressman Roy and he mentioned the dangers of fentanyl and how he wanted to help in any way he could,” BISD Director of Communications Bryan Benway told The Star. “Dr. Price and I immediately asked him to help us with this PSA and he graciously accepted.
“The PSA is just the beginning of future educational piece for our community regarding Fentanyl and other drugs.”
The increasing danger of the fentanyl crisis is made apparent by the CDC’s statistics. According to the federal agency, overdose deaths from synthetic opioids – like fentanyl – increased more than 56 percent between 2019 and 2020. Further, the number of synthetic opioid overdoses grew 18 times between 2013 and 2020.
Just a tiny bit of residue of the powerful painkiller is deadly, information stated, and the CDC states the drug is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
The misused drug began predominantly being manufactured in China then shipped to Mexico where cartels illegally have transported the deadly drug into the United States for dispersion. When asked whether halting the supply chain purchase of the drug form China could slow the illicit export, Roy said while that hasn’t been examined in full depth, the Mexican cartels have begun producing the illicit substance themselves, reducing the impact a U.S. supply chain shift would have on the illicit export of the substance.
While this is a national issue, Kendall County has not been immune to the impacts. Just last month, a 22-year-old man pleaded guilty to the possession of the dangerous drug and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison.
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