Some Michigan Schools Are Including Narcan In Their First Aid Kit

With opioid abuse on the rise in our state, some schools are taking precautions.

When you think of a first aid kit, you mostly think of band-aids, aspirin, iodine, those sort of things. Now there is something new you may discover in your schools first aid kit and that is Narcan.

Narcan is a drug that can reverse an opioid over dose. It can be administered as a nasal spray or a shot, and now some Michigan schools are keeping it on hand.

Steve Matthews, superintendent of the Novi Community School District, told the Detroit Free Press...

We recognize that opioids are a problem in society at large. In Novi all teachers and administrators received naloxone training at the start of the school year. Our district kind of is a reflection of society and so we felt that in order to be proactive, we should at least have a resource to help us in case opioids ever found their way into our schools. For a school not to have it, is, in some ways, putting their head in the sand and not being willing to address a certain problem out in society.

And Mr. Matthews does not seem to be wrong. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a study and discovered that Michigan ranks 14 in deaths due to overdoses.

In 2017 Narcan became acceptable to be kept on hand in the school systems. The state tracks how often and where the Narcan is used, this is what was reported...

During the 2017-18 school year, the first and only year for which figures are available, state records indicate that Narcanwas used on five separate occasions, though one district said the report is inaccurate.

Not all Michigan schools have decided to keep the drug on hand but Pete Kudlak, superintendent for Van Buren Public Schools in Belleville stated...