One night last September, Melanie Ramos, a 15-year-old student at Helen Bernstein High School in Los Angeles, was found dead in the school bathroom.
He swallowed a fentanyl-tainted Percocet he received from another student.
Melanie has become the face of the opioid epidemic that is wreaking havoc in Southern California high schools and now elementary schools. With that in mind, a few days ago I invited Mr. Jaime Puerta to give a presentation to parents from various Los Angeles schools about the dangers of fentanyl.
Most students are independent, but they are vulnerable. The schools that are supposed to protect them are where many get addicted to drugs.
“There is no deadlier drug in the history of the United States: two milligrams — the amount that fits on the tip of a pencil — is enough to kill a person,” Mr. Puerta explained.
This father became an expert on the substance after an overdose claimed the life of his 16-year-old son Daniel in 2020. Like Melanie, the boy didn’t know what he was taking. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Puerta made it her mission to educate other parents about the fentanyl epidemic, and to that end she founded VOID (Victims of Illicit Drugs in English).
Pharmaceutical fentanyl is a powerful analgesic used to relieve pain in cancer patients, but the pharmaceutical industry has turned it into a potent illicit drug that circulates as clones of Xanax, OxyContin, Aderall, or Percocet hidden in lozenges and sweets or agglutinated into colored tablets made in clandestine laboratories.
Last year, in the aftermath of the Melanie death scandal, Los Angeles School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho was forced to do something about it. But he contented himself with replenishing the school first-aid kits with naloxone (Narcan), a drug for the treatment of fentanyl overdose. Reactive and insufficient response.
In this regard, I want to share an instructive personal experience. In July 2019, my family and I requested a meeting with school authorities to discuss drug abuse at Cleveland High School in Los Angeles, where one of my daughters was a freshman in high school. Among other things, my daughter stated that she and other classmates cannot use the school toilets because several students have monopolized them to snuff.vaping– and smoking marijuana.
School officials denied that drugs were used on campus, but at the same meeting, school police officials acknowledged that drugs were a chronic problem on campus and that drug use had spread into the primary election.
After listening to Mr. Puerta at our meeting, the mothers and fathers present took the opportunity to express their disappointment. They are very concerned about the safety of their children and believe that LAUSD is not doing enough to protect them.
A comprehensive program of education, control and prevention is needed to address the problem of drugs in schools, so I propose a few axes below:
1. An effective space monitoring plan for each campus
2. Active educational campaigns in schools, starting from elementary school.
3. Adoption of tools for measuring results.
4. Include students, teachers and parents.
5. Create a system of accountability for the use of public funds aimed at curbing the use of drugs and tobacco in educational institutions.
Most students are independent, but they are vulnerable. The schools that are supposed to protect them are where many get addicted to drugs.
LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country. Three out of four students are Hispanic. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho claims the district’s schools are the safest in the country.
We know this is not true.
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Source: La Opinion
David Ortiz is an opinionated and well-versed author, known for his thought-provoking and persuasive writing on various matters. He currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker, where he shares his insight and perspective on today’s most pressing issues. David’s unique voice and writing style make his articles a must-read for those seeking a different point of view.