Why are students overdosing on Fentanyl? An interview with Mr. Roque
By Carlos P. and Maria M.
CATS interviewed assistant principal Mr. Antonio Roque about the recent number of student deaths and overdoses in LAUSD that have been caused by Fentanyl-laced pills. He explains important information about the drug and shares how it is affecting our community. He was formerly a substance abuse counselor at LAUSD.
Q: What are the effects of an overdose? What are signs that someone is overdosing?
A: “When someone is in the process of overdosing because they’ve taken a lot of drugs ,there are several things that happen to the body. One of the things, and it depends on the drug, but in the last month or so, probably longer, but in the last month we had have about 9 students in the district, not here at CATS, but in the district, in other schools, that have overdosed from drugs that are called opioids.
Opioids are a category of drugs that are prescribed for people, but there are some young people who are using it to get high, and there is one drug in particular that the students had been doing without them knowing, and is called Fentanyl. So there is a couple of students, one at the schools in Hollywood that took/bought a pill called Percocet, which is a prescribe medication. They thought it was Percocet but it wasn’t, it was Fentanyl. And Fentanyl is a drug that is extremely powerful, and it’s usually prescribed by doctors for people who have gone through like major surgery and is to ease the pain. A lot of the times that medicine is not prescribed until for people who are at the point of dying, so this is not even use for regular pain. For regular pain there is other, also powerful drugs.
So some of these students that have overdosed, some of the effects or some of the things that you can see are the pupils in the eye get really, really, small. They call them pinpoint pupils because they get really, really, small, then it looks like they are getting drowsy because part of what the drug does it depresses your central nervous system, so your blood starts pumping really slow and so the person becomes kind of limp, your muscles get weak, your breathing slows down, you can vomit or get nauseous, you can have constipation, you know, problems with going to the restroom, you can lose consciousness, some of the other effects, like a person may still look like their awake but they are not able to talk, those are some just some of the effects.”
Q: Why do you think teens in LAUSD take those fentanyl-laced pills?
A: “Part of the [problem with] Fentanyl…is that they don’t know that they’re taking it. What they think they’re taking is not Fentanyl. What they think they are taking is other drugs that are also dangerous but some of the drug cartels in Mexico and in other places, they have been making Fentanyl pills that look like other drugs, and so a lot of the times, even the person who is selling it, doesn’t know that it has Fentanyl.
There was also a young person, not a student, he was I believe 20 years old, who bought a pill at Bethune Park and then he overdosed and he died, and his brother and sister come to Green Design [Steam Academy at Diego Rivera]. It’s here in our community. Thats why it’s really important to educate students about what it is. But any drug is dangerous, I don’t want us to focus just on Fentanyl, but Fentanyl is the ones that definitely is in our community a lot.
It’s here in our community. Thats why it’s really important to educate students about what it is. But any drug is dangerous, I don’t want us to focus just on Fentanyl, but Fentanyl is the one that definitely is in our community a lot.
– Mr. Roque, assistant principal
Some students, for example the two students that overdosed in the school in Hollywood, one of them, that was her first time trying that drug. She had never tried a drug, so you are asking me, “Why are they doing that?” So she didn’t know that she was taking fentanyl, she thought she was taking a drug call Percocet, but why did she do it, I don’t know. She probably was a little bit pressured by herself, may be with her friend that went together and bought it, but she had never done it before. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it might be because they are going through stuff at home and they kind off want to get away or forget the stuff that they’re going through and so they do that. But the pill that she thought she was taking, Percocet, that’s still dangerous even without the Fentanyl.”
Q: Are there any cases in our school?
A: “I haven’t found any or I don’t know if there’s any cases in our school, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t, But we haven’t heard of any overdose in our school. We haven’t heard of any students that have overdosed from Fentanyl either outside of the school, and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen .”
Q: How can this be prevented from happening here?
A: “Educate yourself and if you have friends that do drugs or are thinking about doing drugs, advise them. One of the things we are doing here is that we are gonna be going to advisories and we are going to be talking to all the students at CATS. In fact, all the students in the [Diego Rivera] Complex not just in CATS. And we are going to be going over what Fentanyl is, what it looks like, and what it does. As a matter of fact, I was working on a powerpoint [presentation], and Halloween is coming, so make sure your friends or if you have any siblings that you talk to them about being careful, so talk to your friends to make sure they stay away from all of that.”
Q: How do you take fentanyl pills? Do you take them like normal pills?
A: “Yeah, so they call it rainbow Fentanyl and they look like [the candy] Smarties. For a little kid and even for teenagers you see them and you’re going to think they are candy and pop them in your mouth and kill you.”
Q: Why is learning more about these themes important?
A: “We want to keep our students safe, we want to keep our community safe, it’s not just the students, it’s our families because when somebody is using drugs, it affects everybody. It affects the entire community. Even here at school we have students that use drugs. Even if it’s pot, that affects everybody else’s learning. It affects how to do things, it disrupts the classroom when somebody is like that. We want to make sure that we have a safe environment for students to come and learn.”
Q: What happens with the people that sell those pills in the school?
A: “With this, especially, they can get arrested and even if they sell it outside of school. For example they arrested the student who sold the pills to the students of the high school in Hollywood. I heard he was 15 years old and he probably didn’t know he got Fentanyl, but he did get arrested for selling it. Now because he’s 15 years old and he’s a minor, I think he was released and he wasn’t sent to jail but now he has a permanent record. So while the person is arrested, they might not send them to jail but now they have a record and it’s always gonna affect them.”
Q :Does LAUSD get in trouble ( because this happens mostly in the district)?
A: “I wouldn’t say that they got in trouble. The parents of the student who died, for example, I know they were upset at the school, at the district, but they didn’t get in trouble. What the district has done is start to do things that a lot of high schools are going to get. We are going to be training some of the district staff to go to the rest of the high schools.”
“Another thing that I hear is, ‘I get it, and nothing happens to me.’ Just because nothing happens to you, doesn’t mean that it is never going to happen to you. It’s like playing with your life. If it doesn’t kill you, you can get addicted very easily, and that creates more problems.”
Mr. Roque, assistant principal
Q: What happens if the school teaches the students but the problem comes from the home?
A: “That’s the problem, sometimes that’s the challenge that we have, because we might be able to educate students here, but then what happens after school or at home, or in our case here at the park, it’s really easy to go to the park and get drugs. Part of the challenge is make sure we educate students the correct way, and talk to them honestly about what can happen, and allow young people like you to make healthy decisions. I have talked to students who know the young man that died, and one of them said, “He is dumb, he wasn’t careful.” It’s not about been careful. Another thing that I hear is, “I get it, and nothing happens to me.” Just because nothing happens to you, doesn’t mean that it is never going to happen to you. It’s like playing with your life. If it doesn’t kill you, you can get addicted very easily, and that creates more problems.”
Q: Is there any advice you want to give students?
A:” Make sure that if they are at the point of trying a drug, it doesn’t matter what drug it is, for them to really think about their loved ones, and how that decision can affect not just them, but everybody around them.”
Important note: LAUSD has approved the use of Narcan, the anti-overdose medication, at schools, according to news reports. The Department of Health will be sending it to schools free of cost.
