There have been some scary moments inside a Westchester County highschool when a teenage scholar all of a sudden collapsed amid an overdose after smoking a weed vape pen that will have been laced with fentanyl.
The large scare came about inside New Rochelle Excessive School earlier within the week, after a scholar went trying to get excessive.
The scholar took a “hit off a vape thinking it was marijuana. Suddenly became very disoriented, not feeling well,” mentioned New Rochelle Faculties Superintendent Jonathan Raymond.
The scholar went to see the college nurses, who’re skilled to identify and deal with potential opioid overdoses. They rapidly administered Narcan to assist the coed, who was later hospitalized. The person was launched Monday evening, and was again at school later within the week.
School nurse Diane Vetrano was acknowledged at a mother or father workshop Tuesday evening for the efforts of her and her crew to avoid wasting the teenager’s life. State educators at the moment are sharing the expertise, because the superintendent is fielding calls from different faculties about coaching the district’s nurses to make use of Narcan, which the colleges have had since 2016.
“We’ve never had to use it. This was our first incident but it’s really important,” Raymond mentioned.
The varsity administrator can also be issuing a warning about vape cartridges that may very well be laced with probably deadly fentanyl.
“To get the message out to our young people: You cannot try something off the street. It can be deadly,” mentioned Raymond.
In New York, faculty campuses are required to have Narcan on hand. Since 2014, the Westchester County Well being Division has provided coaching on how one can administer the possibly life-saving overdose remedy.
But it surely has been a sluggish course of to get authorized weed off the bottom, which has left dozens of hashish growers (many upstate and within the Hudson Valley) in limbo. They’ve grown tons and tons of product, however had nowhere to promote it — till now.