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BELLEVIEW, FL (352today.com) – Fentanyl-related deaths are an increasing problem across the country and in north-central Florida. Those on the front lines of the fight say the opioid epidemic hasn’t made its way into our schools – at least not YET. Even though most victims of fentanyl poisoning are in their 30s, today’s vulnerable teens are potentially tomorrow’s addicted adults. That’s why Marion County officials are focusing on prevention at the school level.
Marion County students advocate against drugs here and in Tallahassee
Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) is a national organization which works to combat drugs, as well as alcohol and distracted driving. Many schools across Marion County have their own chapters, where students learn about the dangers of drugs and inform their peers.
The SADD club at Belleview High School runs a number of anti-drug initiatives on campus, like the Friday Night Done Right campaign, where students pledge to celebrate the weekend sober. They also promote campaigns like Drive for Life, Prom Promise and Red Ribbon Week.
SADD doesn’t just teach students about the dangers of drugs, though: It teaches them how to lobby for change.
“We teach them advocacy skills,” said Hilary Jackson, Director of Prevention for the Marion County Children’s Alliance Community Council Against Substance Abuse (CCASA), the parent organization of all the Marion County SADD clubs. “I don’t have to tell them what to find important. They already know. They want to talk about this stuff. They want to talk about vapes on their campus and people smoking weed in the bathroom. They’re already there and with it when they come to the table, which is great.”
During Advocacy Week each year, Jackson takes student leaders from the Marion County SADD Youth Advisory Board to Tallahassee to talk to state lawmakers about the impact of drugs in Marion County.
The members spend a lot of time researching and preparing to speak with the legislators. Jackson says they look into everything from local statistics to popular music. She gave Juice WRLD and Mac Miller as examples of musicians popular with teens who sang about drugs and depression and who later died from overdoses.
Juice WRLD is Spotify’s 123rd most popular artist in the world. Some of his most popular songs include “Lucid Dreams” and “Robbery,” which both discuss drug use to numb emotional pain. “Lucid Dreams” has over 2 billion streams on Spotify.
“I take prescriptions to make me feel a-okay.”
– Lucid Dreams by Juice WRLD
Raelin Jodoin, a junior at Belleview High School and member of the Youth Advisory Board, said the students recently participated in a clean-up event at a park in Ocala as part of their research. There, they discovered drug paraphernalia.
“There was a lot of blunts and weed, and homemade injectors – stuff like that. That was a lot of evidence that we used,” said Jodoin. “We also use personal experience like, ‘How many people do you know that [smoke/vape]?’ Well, I can name at least ten people in my class that I know definitely do that.”
How substance use is affecting our teens
Jodoin added that, like many Youth Advisory Board members, she hadn’t realized the severity of the local issue until she joined and did the research herself.
“Being a [SADD] member and hearing the statistics, and doing that research, and seeing how big those [drug use] numbers actually are just in the high school community, really opened my eyes. This is a bigger problem than just a couple of kids. It is a big deal.”
While most teenagers aren’t intentionally taking opioids, according to Jackson, substance use of any kind can lead to fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl is often disguised as fake pills like Xanax or Percocet, and it only takes two milligrams to be lethal.
“Pill experimentation is a thing among young people,” said Jackson. “When we hear about young people dying of what we think is a fentanyl death, many times they don’t know what they’ve taken.”
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s One Pill Can Kill campaign has helpful information for teens, from fentanyl statistics to common street names for pills.
Deadly doses of fentanyl can also be laced into other drugs: even marijuana. That’s why SADD encourages middle and high schoolers to stay sober from the get-go.
“Most people don’t start with [opioids],” said Rob Jordan, the advisor for SADD at Belleview High School. “They start with alcohol. They start with cigarettes. They start with vaping, and that leads to marijuana, and that leads to more and more dangerous things. [I] try to encourage the students… to not ever start.”
When he was a teenager, Jordan wasn’t an angel, he said. He admitted he sometimes hung around the wrong crowd, but he ultimately made the decision to never do drugs, even when his peers did.
“I just felt I was really fortunate to never have completely gone down the wrong road,” said Jordan. “A lot of it was my parents, the upbringing I received and just that little voice in me that talked me out of hanging around those people or going to do certain things with them that night. A lot of my friends didn’t have that voice talking to them, and it ended up really flushing their lives down the drain. They spent time in jail and in prison, and a lot of times, it ends up being drug related.”
Jordan says his own experience as well as the death of a relative are what motivate him to advocate against substance use.
“My uncle died of alcoholism… and doing too many drugs and smoking cigarettes,” Jordan continued. “I don’t like seeing that happen with the students that I have. I’ve long talked about that, even before I was in charge of the SADD club here at the school.”
However, avoiding drug addiction isn’t always so cut-and-dry. As the Youth Advisory Board members mentioned, there are many reasons someone might turn to substance use. SADD doesn’t just advocate against drugs; it advocates for people struggling with addiction.
“SADD just gave me a different mindset – being able to be more gracious to people who might be involved in doing drugs or alcohol because there might be a bigger reason behind that,” said Jodoin. “There could be a bigger reason why somebody is resorting to doing that. [Remember] not to always take it out so harshly.”
A fellow Youth Advisory Board member and Belleview High School junior, Emilie Holmes, shared the sentiment.
“That’s really cool: to see people who have been affected, and see all these different points of view, and learn from that,” said Holmes.
After graduating from Belleview High School next year, both Holmes and Jodoin hope to study medicine.
“Whether I’m working in the emergency department or just in general medicine, I’ll see people who have struggled with addiction or are currently in the recovery process,” said Holmes, adding she believes her experience with the Youth Advisory Board will equip her with compassion in her future career.
Jodoin agreed, adding that she hopes to stay involved in local community advocacy.
GET INVOLVED: The 6th annual Ocala Recovery Festival will be held this Saturday, September 9, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Tuscawilla Park at 829 NE Sanchez Ave. Hear testimonies from those in recovery. Get connected with community resources.