Recently, the Jamesville-DeWitt and Fayetteville-Manlius school districts have made responsible decisions to begin stocking the opioid overdose emergency drug, Narcan, in their school buildings and training school nurses in administering the drug in the event of an emergency. While having lifesaving tools on hand is important in the fight of the heroin epidemic, one of the most important tools is providing accurate and compelling facts about the drug to all members of the community. And recently, area school districts and the New York State Education Department (NYSED) have made big strides in doing this.
Throughout the past few months, J-D and F-M, along with East Syracuse Minoa, have hosted several community forums on substance abuse, bringing in local experts and organizations that deal with various aspects of substance abuse to present to interested community members.
And on June 16, the NYSED released a supplement guiding document on heroin and opioids to assist school districts to meet requirements of modernizing health education instruction. This document includes material for students in pre-k through 12th grade to include the education instruction of heroin and opioid content within the alcohol, tobacco and other drugs curricula.
Teaching students at all grade levels the facts about opioids and other dangerous drugs acknowledges the issue rather than push it under the rug. In many aspects of life, we live in a privileged area and it is very easy to fall in the mindset of “this is a problem that doesn’t happen here.”The fact is that heroin abuse and overdose is a growing trend that impacts and damages the lives of people in all walks of life.
When people are uneducated about a topic, they are more likely to make poor decisions when faced with situations involving them. We believe local and state level education is a positive step in the combating this growing problem in our communities.
