ABC News(BUDA, Texas) Bandages, ice packs, aspirin and epinephrine have long been staples of nurse Dawn Baker s public high school medical clinic in Texas.
Now, she also stocks Naloxone to treat drug overdoses keeping a supply by the door in case she needs to save a life in an instant.
"Schools have had drugs in them forever. It s just that the drug is so much stronger and so much scarier now, and, you know, the outcome is death," Baker said.
As the nation s fentanyl crisis claims a growing number of American teenagers each year, school districts nationwide are scrambling to acquire the opioid-reversing drug, train teachers and students how to use it, and combat stigma from openly acknowledging problems with addiction.
Last year, just two weeks after Hays County gave Nurse Baker six doses of Naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan, she was called to a classroom where a 16-year-old girl was unresponsive.
"She checked all the boxes of an overdose," she
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