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
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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