WSJ: Schools Step Up Efforts to Fight Opioid Abuse
Many U.S. schools are ramping up campaigns to prevent opioid abuse among students as evidence mounts of a growing problem.
Some are inviting pharmacists to schools to convey the dangers of prescription pills. Others are offering emergency counseling via text message. In some regions, schools are teaching a substance-abuse-prevention program developed at Cornell University to students as young as fourth grade.
The widening crisis of addiction to heroin, prescription painkillers and other opioids “has been very scary, very serious,” says Michael Lubelfeld, superintendent of an elementary- and middle-school district in Deerfield, Ill. “We want to do everything as a community to start addressing it at age 10, 11, 12, so when they are 23 they aren’t going to be addicted.”
Botvin LifeSkills Training was developed by Gilbert Botvin, a professor emeritus at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. Conducted in as many as 15 sessions over several weeks, the program teaches kids the traits they need to resist pressure to abuse substances, including self-esteem and strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
Julie Filler, the mother of the young man who died, said it took a while to convince some of the schools to accept the help. “The communities don’t want to talk about it because they want people to buy houses here, ” she says of drug addiction.