'Open, Insert, Squirt.' In This Town, Children Are Taught to Administer Narcan

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50011"><span class="small">Dan Levin, The New York Times</span></a>

Sunday, 23 February 2020 14:32

Levin writes: "'It's just like a little squirt gun," she told the group of children, before passing around the small plastic device for them to hold and squeeze.'"

Nash Kitchens, 7, attended a training on how to administer Narcan at the Public Library in Elizabethton, Tenn., on January 15. (photo: Mike Belleme/NYT)

'Open, Insert, Squirt.' In This Town, Children Are Taught to Administer Narcan

By Dan Levin, The New York Times

23 February 20

In rural Carter County, Tenn., health officials have embraced a strategy for stemming addiction: Teaching children as young as 6 how to reverse an overdose.

hortly after his first-grade class let out for the day, Nash Kitchens sat with a dozen other young children at a library and played a murder mystery game that had a surprising plot twist.

The victim was a restaurant worker who had been found dead in a freezer. The killer, the children would discover, was heroin laced with fentanyl, an often fatal opioid.

Nash, who at 7 years old has a relative who has struggled with addiction, was wide-eyed as Jilian Reece, a drug prevention educator, talked about an ongoing opioid epidemic in their small rural community. She then demonstrated how to administer Narcan, an overdose reversal nasal spray.

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