Death in Disguise: Rising overdoses due to fentanyl-laced drugs impacts the East community, causing students to reconsider taking illegal drugs

Senior Madison Putt* didn’t ever think about fentanyl until she had to. 

She had to think about it when her childhood best friend overdosed due to fentanyl. She didn’t want to think about how her friend went a little too far only once and paid with her life. 

Putt’s friend passed away from fentanyl last year and since then, Putt has become more nervous for students who take hard drugs. She doesn’t want another friend to feel the helplessness she did.

While no known East students have overdosed on fentanyl, many have felt the impacts nearby in the community. Some have lost friends and family from an overdose, while others have developed a caution for fentanyl. Putt feels there should be more awareness of the presence of fentanyl within the community.

While SMSD has not yet had to arrest any students for possession of fentanyl, according to Student Resource Officer Tony Woolen, Woolen still believes it’s a topic to discuss. 

In March, a brick of fentanyl that would’ve been made into 10,000 counterfeit oxycodone tablets was seized by the Kansas City Police Department. Fentanyl has reached the Kansas City markets and its impact is reflected in the number of overdose deaths. Between 2019 and 2020, there was a 149% increase in fentanyl-related overdose deaths in the KC metro area, according to the KCPD. 

Now that fentanyl has reached the East community, students are hearing more stories of a friend of a friend overdosing on what they think could have been fentanyl. The high they got was a lot stronger than they were used to. They’d never felt that intensity of a high before. However, most students won’t ever fully know if they were on it until it is too late. 

Junior Max Garfield*, who’s avoided attending certain parties out of fear of fentanyl being present there, thinks that students are aware of fentanyl, but can’t imagine encountering fentanyl themselves. 

“I think [students] are definitely worried about it as a community thing,” Garfield said. “[To] a lot of people it seems like, ‘Oh, I can never be addicted to fentanyl; it can never happen to me.’ They’re not really concerned about having it happen to themselves. It’s hard to see yourself as the person who’s actually having a negative experience.”

To address the increasing cases of fentanyl, Principal Jason Peres spoke about his concerns of students taking substances not knowing they contained fentanyl at a PTSA meeting on March 29.

“We discussed how fentanyl is a real problem in every school, in every community across America,” Peres said. “And it is a real problem here in the metro area as well. It’s not just something that we talk about and we never have to deal with.”

Peres spoke to the PTSA about the need to spread awareness about how little it takes to overdose — just 2 mg according to the National Center for Drug Abuse. Peres mentioned how he would like, if they’re comfortable, the parent who lost their child to fentanyl and recently gave a talk for the Blue Valley School District to speak to East students next fall about their child’s story.

The only thing East can do as of now to prevent fentanyl overdoses is education and raising awareness, Peres said. Other measures such as increasing the availability of naloxone — a medicine that specifically corrects these overdoses — are solely reactive, as the overdose has already happened by the time naloxone has been administered.

Fentanyl is cheap and easy to produce compared to cocaine or meth. It only takes a small amount to produce an addictive high that keeps customers coming back for more — a benefit for the drug dealers profiting off of this, according to the DCCCA Inc.

“The thing is, drug traffickers aren’t exactly scientists, so there’s a fine line between building your clientele and killing your clientele,” Chrissy Mayer, the Chief Community-Based Services Officer at DCCCA Inc. said.

With only 2 mg of fentanyl that can lead to a near-certain death, even the smallest difference of it can determine if one survives. In comparison, the lethal dosage for heroin is 100 mg and cocaine is 250 mg. Because such a miniscule amount can cause an overdose, fentanyl-related deaths are far more likely. 

“You can compare it to a grain of salt,” Mayer said. “That could be enough to cause an overdose.” 

When someone overdoses from fentanyl, the drug slows their heartbeat and their veins collapse. They turn clammy, frigid and pale. The oxygen leaves their body slowly. This occurrence is becoming more common as the frequency of fentanyl-laced drugs is rising.  

“When you think of someone overdosing [it’s] like, ‘Oh, they were a drug addict and they had been doing drugs and stuff like that,’” Putt said. “But with her, it’s not like she had a moment where people kind of found out that she was doing drugs and offered her help. It was the one time that she did a little too much, she just died.” 

Now that Putt’s experienced the loss of a friend to fentanyl, she warns her friends that “it’s not OK” to take non-prescribed pills offered at parties, or any time. She won’t ever take the risk that her friend did.

Currently, the only treatment for an opioid overdose is naloxone. In a survey conducted in 2018 by the National Public Radio, 41% of participants were unaware an antidote for fentanyl existed. Naloxone is available free upon request to any Kansan through the DCCCA Inc. through an online form. 

“It definitely made me not even consider doing types of drugs that would [potentially] have fentanyl in it,” Putt said. “Just because the tiniest bit would kill you.”