USC is back up and running — not just on campus, but at parties, tailgates and social gatherings for students new and returning. For many students, that means party culture is back.
But something that’s never left? Accidental fentanyl overdoses in Los Angeles. In fact, they’re not leaving — but dangerously on the rise.
Los Angeles County’s most recent report on fentanyl overdoses, published in July, showed that deaths have almost doubled in the last decade. It remains the leading cause of death of adults through the age of 45, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Now, students are again pushing to get education on how to use nasal naloxone, or Narcan — a life-saving medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose — into dorms. And USC Student Health, student organizations and alumni spoke out on their advice for students navigating a safer return to campus. In light of September’s National Recovery Month, here’s what to know about fentanyl, where to find Narcan, how to use it and why it matters that you know.
How deadly is fentanyl?
Fentanyl is an opioid that has become widespread in drug markets over the last decade. In Los Angeles County, accidental deaths by overdoses have increased by about 68 times since 2014 — and over 3,000 Angelenos died from fentanyl last year alone.
“It has been one of the most devastating public health challenges we face as a nation over the last 10 years,” USC’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman said of the opioid crisis. “It continues to unfortunately impact so many people, and higher-ed and college campuses have not remained immune from this.”
The drug is about 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. Experts say a strawberry-seed amount of fentanyl is enough to kill an adult, and it can start to kill in two minutes.
How do you stop an overdose?
Recognizing the rapidly growing crisis, the Food and Drug Administration approved nasal Narcan, or naloxone, as a treatment for overdoses. If you suspect someone is overdosing, and they are unable to wake up or breathe properly, using Narcan is simple: Insert the nozzle into either nostril and press the plunger to give a dose.
It’s good to know that there are few side effects of Narcan if the person is not overdosing — and Narcan works on any opioids. But since opioids can stay in the body longer than Narcan does, multiple doses may be necessary.
The key point is access. Van Orman said it’s easier than ever to get Narcan, since laws on distribution have relaxed over the last few years.
“Now, we’re able to really just provide it to anyone with just-in-time training,” Van Orman said.
Where do you get Narcan?
For almost a year, USC has offered Narcan and testing strips to students free-of-charge, no-questions-asked at the Engemann and Eric Cohen Student Health Centers, as well as the Wednesday farmers markets in McCarthy Quad. It’s part of an effort by NaloxoneSC, a graduate student and university partnership to prevent opioid overdoses through education, resource distribution and destigmatization.
Over the last few years, USC students have emerged as a leader in prevention education amid the opioid crisis.
Team Awareness Combating Overdose (TACO) Inc. is a USC-born nonprofit that was founded in 2020 after four students died from accidental fentanyl overdoses in 2019.
TACO hosts weekly distributions of fentanyl test strips at stands at the Hoover campus entrance, and along the Row on Tuesdays and Fridays. They provide test strips at a subsidized cost to on-campus delivery services SNAG and Duffl. Many Greek life organizations order test strips in bulk from TACO to protect their members. TACO also offers Narcan training to on-campus organizations for free, and posts harm reduction methods on their social media (@taco.usc on Instagram, and @tacoinc_ on Instagram and TikTok).
TACO Executive Director and senior majoring in pharmacology and drug development, Reem Alharithi said her main goal is to “prevent accidental drug exposure.”
“Test every single substance and carry nasal Naloxone, because you never know who around you may be overdosing, and you never know whether a drug that you are taking has illicit fentanyl, if you yourself did not pick it up from a licensed pharmacy or dispensary,” Alharithi said.
The difficult road to getting Narcan in dorms
After a string of overdoses claimed four students’ lives, students sought to get Narcan made available in dorms, like UCLA currently offers. In 2020, Van Orman said USC was not considering it because data showed upperclassmen, who typically live off-campus, were most at-risk.
Then in 2022, Undergraduate Student Government Vice President Brianna Sanchez — then a freshman and general member on the Wellness Committee — re-opened the conversation with a project proposal that she and the committee presented to the Office for Residential Education. She advocated for training resident assistants (RAs) in how to use Narcan and to equip them with it.
In response, she was told Residential Education didn’t want to “put [RAs] in that type of situation where they feel like they need to save someone’s life,” Sanchez said.
After proposing to have Narcan available in dorm lobbies for students to take, like Student Health Centers, Sanchez said she was told “they didn’t want to endorse the use of narcotics, and that a situation like this has never happened on campus.”
Though disappointed, Sanchez diverted her efforts to partnering with NaloxoneSC and Van Orman, developing workshops for RAs, students and faculty to get trained whenever and wherever, a program she says has had some success. Still, she passed the project down to her now-Executive Aide to the Vice President Varun Tummalapalli.
The university would not say whether they would make Narcan available in dorms, instead encouraging students, departments, clubs and leaders to visit its online resources page and to request prevention training alongside Narcan distribution.
“This ‘train the trainer’ approach ensures education and awareness are combined with the distribution,” the university said. “It helps socialize and normalize carrying Narcan. It also ensures the reversal medication is more widely accessible to the community.”
Tummalapalli, also a former Wellness Committee member, said he reshaped the project to get those workshops offered and incentivized inside of residence halls and make Narcan available at meetings. On September 9, he received a green light from the student-led Residential Housing Association (RHA), a liaison to Residential Education.
“They were very open and supportive of the initiative,” Tummalapalli said, and despite Residential Education having “given [them] trouble in the past two years … RHA only had positive things to say about the new ResEd Director, Shigeo Iwamiya,” who must approve the project next.
Students, past and present, speak out
Because the crisis has grown rapidly in the last decade, it emerged as a challenge uniquely facing this generation. But one USC alumna has advocated for the issue publicly and in front of Congress.
Former California congresswoman Mary Bono is one of the many politicians calling for the implementation of Narcan as part of emergency protocol and rigorous drug education programs in schools — namely at USC.
“You start with naloxone. It should be accessible, readily available,” she said. “There should be resources on it, training kids to use it, training professors to use it. It should be more ubiquitous on a college campus than a defibrillator … If I were Dr. Folt, that’s what I would do.”
Another part of Bono’s strategy is destigmatization. She said creating a network that extends beyond the school environment is crucial to having true open dialogues with students, parents and the broader community.
“The number one problem is people think it’s not going to happen to them, and if we can get over that hurdle, and talk to people in the loving kind way about raising the dangers of drugs and how important it is to carry naloxone, we’ll make change,” she said.
Bono recognized how the landscape has changed since her college days: Today’s dealers are not just street-level operatives but sophisticated transnational criminal organizations and cartels.
“It was just a different time. It’s not the same, and the risk is so much bigger,” Bono said. “If you would have told me as a senior at USC, one day there’s going to be pills on campus that you take one and you might not make it through the day, I couldn’t have even imagined that.”
TACO Executive Director Alharithi agreed. She said TACO reduces accidental overdose through two main arms: peer-to-peer education and harm-reduction supplies.
“Both of our essential efforts are equally important because without the education about fentanyl and drug use, people wouldn’t use the tools,” she said. “If people don’t know about what fentanyl is and why it’s so dangerous, no one’s going to use the fentanyl test strips, and no one’s going to carry Narcan.”
Dealers use fentanyl to bulk up their supply of Xanax, Adderall, OxyContin or other drugs because of its low cost and highly addictive nature. These potent, counterfeit pills — often marketed as prescription Percocet or oxycodone — are easily accessible through social media or from friends, usually costing only a few dollars each.
“The problem is these illicit pills,” Bono said. “They’re manufactured in such horrible labs and part of the pill can have fentanyl in it, and part of the pill might not have fentanyl in it. So if you try a fentanyl test strip, you don’t know if you’re actually testing the part of the pill where the fentanyl is.”
Bono finished her congressional term in 2013, but that hasn’t stopped her from continuing to advocate for both national and state level policy. As the CEO and Chair of Mothers Against Prescription Drug Abuse, she spearheaded a letter this past August alongside other nonprofits to all U.S. governors detailing steps each state can take to mitigate the opioid epidemic.
“Congress is finally awakened to this problem. A decade ago, they were not really engaging. They know we need more funding,” Bono said. “Unfortunately, there’s reauthorizing legislation that has to happen. The hurdles aren’t philosophical disagreements between Republicans and Democrats. The hurdles, unfortunately, this year [are] the calendar timing of election year and other priorities.”