Community activists in South Florida sprang into action after West Point cadets on spring break were sickened by fentanyl-laced cocaine at a house party.
Huston Ochoa, a clinical counselor for The Spot, hands out samples of Narcan, which can reduce opioid overdoses, to spring breakers on Fort Lauderdale Beach, Fla., on March 31, 2022. Community activists are warning spring breakers of a surge in recreational drugs being laced with the dangerous opioid fentanyl, and offered them an antidote for overdoses _ which have risen nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We weren’t sure how people would react,” said Thomas Smith, director of behavioral health services for The Special Purpose Outreach Team, a local mobile medical program. “But the spring breakers have been great. Some say, ‘I don’t do drugs, but my buddy sometimes does something stupid.’ They are happy to get Narcan.”Smith's team pulls up to Fort Lauderdale beach in a brightly colored mobile clinic van.
“There's only so much you can do when you see someone on the floor,” he said, adding that he had witnessed numerous overdoses during his days in New York. “One snort, one swallow, one shot can kill," said Jim Hall, a retired epidemiologist from Nova Southeastern University, who has worked with the county's opioid response team."It is not just in Florida but anywhere in North America.”For the first three months of 2022, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue responded to 373 calls involving a possible overdose, where Narcan was administered, Battalion Chief Stephen Gollan said. That's an average of more than four per day.
Groups such as The SPOT and the South Florida Wellness Network, which partner with the United Way of Broward County, agreed to hit the beaches to talk with people about the dangers associated with fentanyl-laced drugs. They also talked to restaurant and bar owners who could distribute Narcan if"someone went down," Scharf said.The groups have so far distributed more than 2,000 doses of Narcan supplied by state grants.
The region isn't yet out of the spring break period, which runs until mid-April, but Scharf said organizers have been heartened to see a couple of weekends pass without any overdoses that resulted in emergency calls.“We had a terrible situation,” with overdoses of the cadets and others, and turned it into “an opportunity to really beef up our education and prevention efforts by flooding the beaches and the streets,” Scharf said.
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