In light of National Recovery Month, we reached out to members of our community who have insights on drug abuse and overdose prevention. Here’s Caitlin Calfo for more.
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National Recovery Month focuses on drug rehabilitation and we asked experts in our community how to ensure drug safety.
Here is Madeline Hillard, the founder and chief executive of Trojan Awareness Combatting Overdose—also known as TACO. Hillard explained how TACO makes fentanyl testing strips available to students.
Students are able to order test strips for delivery in 10 minutes, seven days a week…
Students can order strips through TACO’s partnership with DUFFL. That’s D U F F L, a student run delivery service.
So there’s really no reason for students to not be tested their drugs for something as lethal as final.
TACO works closely with USC’s Interfraternity Council to provide resources for a population historically susceptible to overdose. Dylan Strode is IFC’s Vice President of Recruitment. He explains how TACO provides resources for safe drug use..
We’re all adults and we’re all college kids, so you can’t really convince them to do that. So the second step is, OK, if you’re going to make that decision, we have the resources for you to do it the same way possible. And that’s our ultimate goal.
Toxicology Professor Daryl Davies explained COVID’s impact on drug use.
COVID is exasperated because the social isolation and other issues, more of the substance abuse, more people experimenting because of just pure boredom, lack of support groups, lack of counseling.
Davies also explains why this is such a critical issue to USC administration.
This is a challenge that is not going away. And the new synthetic drugs such as fentanyl elicit fentanyl. It’s just so it’s so cheap to synthesize. It’s so inexpensive. And you can you can mask it to look like anything. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth.
Testing strips are available for delivery through TACO.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Caitlin Calfo