Southern California high school students are surrounded by a prescription pill-sharing culture that is contributing to accidental deaths, according to a former Orange County school board candidate.
“A lot of parents are on antidepressants or kids at school are on Adderall and there is this underground prescription drug trading that goes on in high schools but because fentanyl isn't like weed or heroin where it's easily identified as that, you can slip it into anything,” said Kira Davis who campaigned for a seat on the Capistrano Unified School District board.
Davis was reacting to reports that a 15-year-old Los Angeles student named Melanie Ramos died of suspected fentanyl poisoning in the Helen Bernstein High School bathroom.
“I don't think kids are purposefully going out and overdosing on fentanyl,” she said. “We are just seeing dangerous cartels and other bad actors supplementing their drugs with this because it makes it cheaper for them to produce. We're looking at an epidemic that really is under the radar for a lot of kids.”
The deceased teen’s mother, Elena Perez, has sued the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) alleging negligence and wrongful death in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
As previously reported, Perez seeks damages and alleges that educators were aware of “rampant drug sales” and prior overdoses but did not address the issue with a safety course of action.
“School administrators need to have access to lifesaving injections of Narcan on campus,” Davis told the Southern California Record. “They need to be in an accessible area for approved administrators and we need to have more education assemblies to educate people about the dangers of fentanyl and where it comes from.”
It was widely reported that two teenage boys were linked to Ramos’ death and have been arrested. In a press release posted on Twitter, the Los Angeles Police Department said it is investigating multiple overdoses.
“We really need to start thinking about that border and what's coming over,” said Davis, author of the book Drawing Lines: Why Conservatives Must Begin to Battle Fiercely in the Arena of Ideas. “South Orange County is only 50 miles from the border or less and LA is not that much further away. These drugs are coming in indiscriminately.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the California-Mexico border on Dec. 12 where he toured a migrant shelter in Mexicali with the Governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar Avila-Olmeda.
"It's so bad that even our governor at this point is down at the border saying we need to plug some of these holes and that's a guy who is for free and open immigration," Davis added.