DESPERATE MEASURES

6-Year-Olds in Tennessee Learning How to Give Narcan for ODs

A drug prevention educator is teaching children about the overdose-reversal medication in a community ravaged by opioids.

A county in opiods-ravaged Tennessee is teaching children as young as 6 how to administer Narcan to overdose victims, The New York Times reports. Nearly 600 youngsters and youths in rural Carter County have been trained with the life-saving nasal spray and given two doses to take home—and it appears that up to 100 of them have had to use it. “Lots of people say children don’t need to think about these things,” drug prevention educator Jilian Reece told the Times. “But I’d rather a kid should go through the trauma of giving Narcan than see their parent die.” Sixty people in the county of 56,000 have died from opioids since 2014.