COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — After a recent Fentanyl-related death at Mitchell High School in Colorado Springs. The district now has Narcan available in every school building.

The head nurse of District 11 (D11) said Narcan helps reverse the effects of opioid and fentanyl overdoses. So far in 2022, the district has only had to use it once.

“A lot of kids experiment with different things and I would rather have this Narcan available to use than have a student die because they were experimenting with something new,” Head Nurse of D11 Bobbi Lahey said.

In January, the schools were each provided with Narcan in D11 and every building has staff members that are trained in giving the life-saving drug.

“We did start noticing a few more students who might be participating more with drug use and of course with what we are seeing in the community we expect to see that,” Lahey added. “Please don’t use drugs, you don’t know what is in them and you don’t know where it’s coming from.”

When someone is showing signs of an opioid overdose, Narcan works by moving the opioids of the drugs out of the receptors found in the brain which helps the person start breathing again.

In Colorado Springs in 2021, the fire department administered Narcan approximately 650 times and on average that’s about 56 uses per month.

D11 said since there was a community-wide rise in overdose cases they also started to see more students participating in drugs.

“Of course what is going in the community we expect to see that, within our community and we did have a couple of times that we were concerned with students that may have been overdosing or at least had been taking something that we were concerned about,” Lahey said.

Dr. Leon Kelly, the El Paso County Coroner said they’ve already had two fentanyl-related deaths among teens this year. Five minors died in 2021.