Heartbreaking tragedy at UC Berkeley Clark Kerr dorm. Does anyone know what happened?
The news stories report that it was a drug overdose and may very well have been accidental (such as a drug laced with fentanyl). On a UCB parents group I am on, some parents have raised the issue of how to get Narcan into the hands of more kids.
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Student rumor is an overdose, but that has not been confirmed.
Tragic.
Narcan is available over the counter now…of course students would need to know how to recognize possible overdose and how to use Narcan. You can buy Narcan online at https://narcan.com/, amazon, and many drugstores (online and in-store).
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Narcan should be everywhere on college campuses and kids should be trained to use it. I have been trying to get for my kids to carry and it is harder than you would think
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My Cal kid is home this weekend and I just told him last night we should get some Narcan for he and his roommates. I need to get some for our family too. So sad.
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Does Narcan work on Fentanyl??? Apparently whatever he took was laced.
Yes Narcan works on any opioid (which is what fentanyl is). Also, if not sure someone is experiencing an opioid overdose, and one administers narcan, there is no harm done/no ill effect.
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Perhaps this student was alone.
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According to students on reddit, he was found unresponsive by his roommates. It’s not clear if it was too late at that point. We don’t know all the details … and as a parent, there is a point at which I also feel a bit uncomfortable with discussion about specific details of a student’s death in the news and on public forums. I feel the family deserves some privacy…
But Narcan can definitely save lives, and it would be good to have it in more first aid kids in student rooms.
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It’s kind of shocking that colleges don’t have this as part of a safety class and available in every door room, aka fire extinguishers. My Police and EMS friends say narcan is a staple on the calls they go out on (sadly, many repeat visits to same individuals). Of course, it’s of no use if the victim is alone at the time.
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How are these type of drugs even entering the campus? Shouldn’t UCB Police crack down on the drug dealers who come to the campus? May be they need help from city police, but I bet those people have some ideas on who the dealers are.
There are drugs at all colleges (and high schools…) and it’s been that way at least since I was in college, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.
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Reallly? These deadly drugs were available on the campus? I also went to college and yes there was weed, but not these type of drugs.
I went to a college where there are a lot of wealthy students, and I remember watching fellow college kids snorting coke in their dorm rooms (NOT something I was interested in doing, btw). That particular drug, just as an example, is frequently adulterated with other things that are quite bad for you. My understanding is that drugs today are even more likely to be full of crap than they were in the old days.
I don’t know what was going on with this particular student, but I do know that he was in a similar socioeconomic class to the coke snorting kids I knew in college. These kids were wealthy, popular, golden boys!
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Yup, sophomore year at the Jesuit college I attended back in the 90s a classmate of mine OD’ed on coke. Sadly, college students doing drugs is nothing new.
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Sadly there has been a dramatic increase in fentanyl-laced drugs - including marijuana. Kids may have no idea what they are ingesting until it is too late.
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/can-simple-fentanyl-test-curb-san-franciscos-overdose-crisis
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Yes, I read that his mom was the CEO of youtube. I still think UC Berkeley is culpable. The student died in their dorm. They have a university police. I am sure the university police is not just for giving parking tickets.
Some drugs that exist today did not exist in the past.
In any case, stopping illegal recreational drug use without becoming a highly authoritarian environment is rather difficult. Has any residential college solved underage alcohol use?
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We just literally had an active shooter on this campus (thankfully, the shooter was stopped before anyone was hurt). The university and city police have plenty of external threats to deal with.
This is an urban campus where dorms are located on city blocks. It would be impossible to stop individual students from obtaining drugs and doing drugs in their dorm rooms.
And anyway, students have ways of obtaining drugs at all colleges… including colleges in peaceful suburban settings, religious colleges, etc.
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