At the beginning of the school year, Occidental students returning to their dorms on campus were greeted by a tote bag containing various supplies, such as fentanyl test strips and naloxone nasal spray (sold under the brand name Narcan). According to an email sent to the student body Aug. 20, these bags are part of a new initiative developed by the Emmons Wellness Center and the Peer Power Program, which aims to protect students and help them respond in case of life-threatening drug-related emergencies.
According to Health Promotion Specialist Laura Fettig, the rising rate of fatal opioid overdoses throughout the United States played an important role in the college’s decision to distribute naloxone — a potentially life-saving medication used to treat opioid overdose — to all students at Occidental.
Fettig said a major contributing factor to the rise in opioid-related deaths is the increasing prevalence of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is often laced in other drugs to increase their potency.
“Fentanyl is just one kind of opioid, but it plays a role in the majority of overdose deaths right now,” Fettig said. “It’s the leading cause of death for adults between 18 to 45 years old.”
According to Fettig, an important step on the path to reducing opioid-related deaths is educating the public about the nature of naloxone.
“People might not quite understand the simplicity of it,” Fettig said. “They might think it’s an injection because that’s what they’ve seen in the movies. They don’t understand that it’s just a nasal spray and that there are no side effects”.
Fettig said that a shift in California legislation around naloxone has made it easier for the college to manage its own harm reduction program.
“It’s now available over the counter as of last fall, ” Fettig said. “It’s not as scary for people to use a medication that you can just buy over the counter, so the change in legislation certainly helped us when we were trying to start distributing it here.”
Grace Adler (senior), founder of End Overdose at Oxy, an organization that educates students on overdose prevention and response with 50 chapters across the country, said she has dedicated her time to educating her peers about the dangers of overdose and how to respond to drug-related emergencies. According to Fettig, Adler spent over four hours during orientation week teaching the first-year class how to administer naloxone to a person experiencing an overdose.
Adler said that her personal experiences were what initially inspired her to start an End Overdose chapter at Occidental.
“I lost a lot of people to overdose, and my freshman year, there was an overdose situation involving people I knew,” Adler said. “That’s part of what convinced me that this needs to be a resource on campus that people have.”
Adler said that each chapter of End Overdose operates differently, depending on the size of the university that they operate on, as well as local state laws surrounding harm reduction.
“In some states, fentanyl test strips aren’t legal because they’re considered drug paraphernalia,” Adler said. “I think that in California, we’re really lucky that we were able to do a lot of this because it’s more accessible for people.”
Devon Sakamoto, assistant dean of students at Emmons Wellness Center, said that the aim of the new harm reduction program is to keep all students safe by meeting them where they are.
“Harm reduction is about reducing the harm associated with alcohol and other drugs and substances,” Sakamoto said. “It’s not meant to tell people not to use these substances, but to provide them with information, access to resources and supplies like those in the bag, to help them use as safely as possible. And that’s really it, it’s just reducing the harm associated with substance use.”
Sakamoto said that until recently, Emmons Wellness Center relied on Adler’s organization for their supply of naloxone.
“Now we get our naloxone from the state of California, but prior to that, we really relied on End Overdose to provide us with naloxone and the fentanyl test strips,” Sakamoto said. “Those relationships were critical. The students are the ones doing the work, and they’re the ones who know the best way to do that.”
According to Fettig, the opioid epidemic is an intensely personal issue for many, making it all the more important to give students the tools to tackle overdose in any situation, on or off campus.
“Most people you ask know someone that has experienced an overdose,” Fettig said. “What we want is to make it as easy as possible for students to choose to carry naloxone in case of an emergency, and for us, that means reaching out to every student and putting it in their hands.”
Contact Adam Pidal at pildal@oxy.edu.
Noah Kim contributed to The Occidental’s reporting.
