Fentanyl crisis: New California bill aims to stop kids from overdosing at schools after two kids nearly die

Within weeks of educators reviving students at two San Jose high schools, a Bay Area legislator announced Monday he plans to introduce a new bill to address the rising number of young people dying from the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.

State Sen. Dave Cortese said he was inspired to draft the bill in part by a Bay Area News Group report last month, which found that fentanyl deaths have spiked sixfold among California youths aged 15-to-24 in the last three years.

“Fentanyl now causes one fifth of youth deaths in California,” Cortese said, citing the report. “It can’t wait any longer.”

The drug, which is considered 50 times stronger than heroin, has exploded across the country in the last half-decade and is increasingly turning up in illicit pills that teens can easily buy off the internet such as study drugs like Adderall and common painkillers like Percocet.

Cortese’s bill, which will be drafted when the legislative session begins this December, will incentivize school districts throughout the state to use money from the state’s Mental Health Services act to fund fentanyl education and awareness programs.

“What’s most important right now is to get into middle schools and high schools, since we have a captive audience across the state,” Cortese said.

The bill would also free up funding for schools to stock up on Narcan, an over-the-counter nasal spray that can prevent a serious fentanyl overdose from becoming a death.

Last month, the principal of Overfelt High School reportedly used Narcan to treat a student who was overdosing on a pill laced with fentanyl. Then just last week, a social worker at Oak Grove High who had just gone through a training program on administering Narcan saved an unresponsive student the very next morning, said Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Mary Dewan.

Cortese said he’s modeling the bill off of the work of Santa Clara County’s fentanyl working group, which is comprised of medical experts, families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl, and elected officials. The group has been helping secure funding for Santa Clara schools to stock up on Narcan kits, and are training school staff on how to administer it.

“What we know is it has already saved lives,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who formed the group earlier this year. “But we also know that there’s no time to wait.”

The Bay Area News Group report found that prior to fentanyl’s rise, the total number of yearly deaths for Californians ages 15 to 24 typically hovered around 3,000. Since 2020, that number has skyrocketed to nearly 4,000 deaths per year. Fentanyl accounted for more than 750 of those deaths in each of the past two years.

Geralyn Maulvasquez, who is also a member of the working group and lost her own 24-year-old son Jacob last year to fentanyl, said the cost of inaction is too high.

“I stress that we need Narcan in every single school,” she said. “We need to bring awareness… so that no one has to go through the trauma that my family continues to go through every single day.”