Drug use has become deadlier for teens, and Southern California is an overdose hot spot.
Melanie Ramos was only 15 years old when she died of a suspected overdose in a high school bathroom in Hollywood. Police reported that she and a friend had purchased pills they thought were prescription painkillers but which were likely fakes containing fentanyl, a potent opioid incorporated into counterfeit pills widely available in the illicit drug market. Fentanyl has caused such overdoses to rise sharply despite declining drug use among young people.
This does not mean using scare tactics, which have been shown to backfire. As modeled by programs such as Safety First, available through Stanford, this approach should instead tap into teens’ desire to keep themselves and their peers safe and give them strategies to do so. These strategies include never using alone , starting with a small amount of a drug to assess its potency, and avoiding mixing pills with alcohol and other sedating substances.
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