Seeing Through The Blind Spots
The fentanyl crisis requires our eyes need to be open with head on a swivel.
Welcome to edition 201 of The Physical Movement. This week we dive into something lurking on the periphery of youth sport : accidental overdoses and death in our youth due to fentanyl.
The expression is as old as sport.
Keep your head on a swivel.
Meaning to be constantly moving your head left and right so that you do not miss anything approaching you from a blind spot. It refers to being aware of your surroundings.
Blind spots.
We all have them. When it comes to our youth, we might have more than we think.
There are blind spots related to the pressures in being a kid today. The blind spots cloud judgement impacted so much via social media and smart phone reliance.
A big blind spot for me is the role of the fentanyl crisis with our youth.
It was 2016 in speaking to a law enforcement officer friend that I asked what the biggest issue was in his small community of Chatham, Ontario, Canada. Chatham has al little more than 100,000 people in the area, is approximately 70 minutes north east of Detroit. It is not a big town, with big city problems. You would not think Chatham had a fentanyl issue but my officer friend said the #1 issue at that time was overdoses in our youth due to fentanyl.
My assumption at that time was that this crisis affected those who were into recreational drugs. Maybe that was the beginning but unfortunately it has grown and become much more than that.
Fast forward to 2023 and if you speak to any firefighter, law enforcement officer or first responder, anyone on the “front lines” , they will immediately bring up fentanyl crisis as a massive issue with our youth.
As coaches and volunteers in youth sport, we don’t know what is going on our kids lives away from when we see them unless we do some homework.
We don’t know the situation at home, the challenges and/or issues. That can become a blind spot.
Keeping our heads on a swivel in this particular case means doing some homework in informing ourselves on the issues around fentanyl and its role in overdoses and premature death.
A podcast favorite of mine “The Drive” , it is a platform where Dr. Peter Attia shares insight into health and longevity. In episode #243 in February of this year, the topic was the fentanyl crisis. It opened my eyes and motivated me to share with you.
There is a link to the video of the podcast below, here is a quick overview:
· Fentanyl has been an effective and often prescribed medication for pain management and sedation in medical settings for some time. As a reference point, fentanyl is more potent and requires less dosage than morphine for the same effect. If you have ever needed pain medication in the hospital, you likely have experienced morphine, so think about the potency of fentanyl in that context.
· At the root of the crisis, fentanyl is being used as a feedstock to produce other drugs because it is both so much cheaper and, secondly, produces a better high.
· Therefore, if you’re trying to make sleeping pills or benzos or anything from Percocet pain pills (which also produce a high) to Adderall and things of that nature, fentanyl is being inserted.
· The problem is, the illegal drug trade is getting the dose wrong, and effectively kids don’t know what they’re taking
· They’re accidentally taking something they don’t know.
· Kids as young as in middle school are at risk, and certainly kids in high school and college.
· The Mexican cartel is now involved and have fentanyl to expand the drug market.
· It only takes micrograms for fentanyl to have a massive impact.
· The big difference between the fentanyl that doctors would prescribe and what the Mexican cartel is making is the dosage.
· The cartel doesn’t know how to control the dosage.
· A lethal dose of fentanyl attacks your respiratory system; it slows everything down
· You get that euphoric high, but you don’t realize that it’s shutting the body down
· Once your respiratory system starts shutting down, your heart rate starts going down and you can be dead in an instant.
If you accidentally gave a hospitalized patient too much (you misjudged a person’s sensitivity) and gave them 100 micrograms when they probably should have only had 50-75 micrograms, and all of a sudden they would slow down their breathing rate to the point where you would either have to put a breathing tube in them to breathe for them, or you would have to give them something like Narcan (see below) to reverse the effect
It was first in 2010/2011 when pain management doctors recklessly prescribing the oxycodone, the Vicodins, the Percocets, and there was no regard for anybody.
These pills are powerful; people get addicted to them and that is what was happening to many at that time.
That’s why a lot of people when they have surgery, they don’t like taking these pain pills because they’re so addictive and they’re afraid they’re going to get addicted.
“The fentanyl game has it just elevated the opioid crisis to a whole, entire new level”‒ Anthony Hipolito
The very difficult story of 17 year old Kevin McConville
· His parents found him in his bed, he appeared to be asleep, but he had passed away.
· When they told one of his friends that he had passed, the friend confided in them that Kevin was taking Percocet and Xanax to help him sleep.
· Another “friend” had given Kevin the pills.
· Kevin had probably taken them before and nothing happened, so he continued to take them.
· They don’t know how many times he took them.
The full story:
About ⅔ of accidental overdose deaths today are attributable to fentanyl (where fentanyl is in the drug they are taking)?
From Anthony Hipolito on the podcast, those ages 18 and 45, fentanyl was the number one killer. It wasn’t gun violence, it wasn’t car crashes, it wasn’t suicides, it wasn’t COVID.” He thinks when we get the 2022 numbers come back, it’s not going to be starting at age 18, it’s going to be 13 or 14.
More intel:
· The cartel are making pills that look like candy
· In law enforcement, they call it rainbow fentanyl or candy fentanyl.
· It looks attractive to the youth.
· They’re also targeting young folks because they want to get people addicted a lot younger so they have that customer base longer.
The cartel have figured out how to color match, perfectly stamp, and manufacture this, and yet they’re off by a dose of a thousand on the active ingredient.
As of the referred to podcast in February, the most recent death in Hays County, Texas was a middle school student; she was 13 years old
Candy fentanyl or the rainbow fentanyl, are being smuggled into North America inside Skittles bags, inside Nerd boxes… it doesn’t have Skittles in it, but it’s full of fentanyl pills that look like a candy (see the picture below)
Fentanyl wrapped in popular candy bags. Image credit: Fox13 Tampa Bay
Crash course on the role of social media in this:
· Fentanyl candy is sold on social media
· They’re very blatant about it, especially on school campuses
· If brought to school, all they have to do is put an emoji up on their Snapchat, and all the kids know so-and-so has pills today.
· Or they’re downloading these encrypted apps (Telegram, Signal) to where once these messages are sent and received, they disappear.
· This is an issue with Snapchat as well.
· It’s hard for law enforcement to go back and try to trace where these pills are coming from.
· Potentially fentanyl is being added to every single counterfeit pill out there.
· Pain meds, Percocet/ oxycodone, Oxycontin, and dilaudid are your big boys.
· Then you’ve got it going into the benzos, your sleeping pills‒ Ativan, your Ambien, Adderall (stimulants)
· Any non-prescription pill that a kids wants is potentially laced with fentanyl.
This is frightening because it is not that uncommon for kids to say : “I need something to help me study. I need something to help me sleep.”
What can we do as parents and coaches?
Take the blinders off, keep your head on a swivel. We can’t say “our kids won’t do this”.
Cover the topic in some form. Have discussions with kids, bring up the facts.
“We have to stop with the stigma, stop with the judging, and we have to work together as a community to get this as low as possible”‒ Anthony Hipolito
Be vigilant about social media. Remove blind spots!
Explore Narcan
Narcan®is a medicine that can help people who are overdosing on an opioid. Opioids include prescription medications, heroin, and fentanyl. Sometimes other drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, are mixed, or laced with fentanyl.
“It may not be your kid, but if somebody’s spending the night at your house and they start getting poisoned and they start showing signs over an overdose, if you don’t have Narcan on hand, you’re going to feel really bad.”‒ Anthony Hipolito
First responders are now carrying Narcan.
Full podcast:
Podcast notes: