PHOENIX – The Arizona Department of Education is distributing Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug, to schools across the state in an effort to address the crisis.

The cast is part of the School Training Overdose Readiness and Intelligence Task Force, also known as STOP IT.

The Arizona National Guard helped distribute the first 4,000 of the 16,000 Narcan kits this week to schools that requested them. Narcan kits are provided by the Arizona Department of Health Services at no cost to schools.

Opioid overdose reversal drug could save lives

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said that while no overdose deaths have been reported on any state school campus, he believes the decision will save lives.

STOP IT co-chair Holly Geyer, an addiction medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, said Arizona has about 4,000 overdoses a year, a substantial portion of which are children.

“Between 2021 and 2022, we lost 80 children in our state to overdoses,” Geyer said.

Geyer explained that the Narcan kit distribution is the first installment of the STOP IT campaign to educate youth about Arizona’s opioid crisis.

“Naloxone is a life-saving drug. It quickly reverses but temporarily an overdose. It has no addictive potential,” Geyer said. “It has the ability to make sure a person has another chance for tomorrow.”

She said they would also publish policies and procedures in a toolkit, which could be adopted nationally. It will be made available to schools in January.

The final installation involves a standardized preparation of the educational school platform. It will teach kids about opioid basics, the state of the opioid epidemic, how to give Narcan and what to do in the event of an overdose.

Horne said that despite existing laws allowing its use, Naloxone remains inconsistently managed in schools.

“If someone has an overdose and they’re at school, Narcan will save their life. So we want to make sure this is in every school,” Horne said. “The one thing we don’t ever want to happen is for a student to die at school.”

Schools can go online to request delivery of opiate overdose reversal medication.