News Update

LAUSD to allow students to carry spray that reverse opioid overdoses

Students will be able to carry Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, in Los Angeles Unified schools under a soon-to-be-updated policy, The L.A. Times reported.

The move, announced to school board members in a message from Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho, comes amid continued alarm about the dangers of illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been consumed unknowingly by teens in counterfeit pills that look like Xanax or OxyContin, the Times reported.

Carvalho wrote to board members Tuesday that the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health “supports a clarification” in L.A. Unified policy “that would allow students to be able to carry Narcan in schools,” and that a policy bulletin was being updated and would be reissued shortly.

Narcan “cannot be used to get high, is not addictive and does not have any effect on a person if there are no opioids in their body,” Carvalho wrote to board members. Nor, he wrote, are there any “long-term consequences” from using it in emergency situations, the Times reported.