College students Grieved Buddy’s Deadly Overdose, Then Pushed for Change

• Niko Peterson and Zoe Ramsey’s battle to avoid wasting lives started after their good friend died in 2021, simply days wanting his sixteenth birthday
• Together with different scholar activists, they went on to kind the group College students In opposition to Overdose — and after efficiently lobbying college directors to permit excessive schoolers to hold and administer naloxone and fentanyl check strips, they then did the identical on the statewide stage
• “Their good friend died, and as a substitute of simply saying, ‘Oh, that is too dangerous,’ they actually did one thing for it,’ ” Colorado State Rep. Barbara McLachlan tells PEOPLE

Niko Peterson and Zoe Ramsey, each current graduates of Colorado’s Animas Excessive College in Durango, nonetheless have fond reminiscences of an expensive good friend and fellow scholar, who died days wanting his sixteenth birthday.

“He was the epitome of accepting,” Peterson, 18, tells PEOPLE. “It didn’t matter your pores and skin coloration, age, no matter — he can be your good friend. He’d care about you.” Provides Ramsey, “He was extraordinarily hilarious…a ball of pleasure and lightweight and marvel.”

Tragically, that good friend (whom PEOPLE is just not naming per the needs of the sufferer’s household) didn’t reside lengthy sufficient to graduate with Zoe and Niko this 12 months. In December 2021, he and one other particular person reportedly overdosed on tablets laced with fentanyl, which they initially thought was Percocet. The opposite individual survived after being given naloxone, a medicine that instantly reverses an opioid overdose, however Niko and Zoe’s good friend died on the scene. 

Niko remembers his coronary heart racing when he first heard that his good friend died. “I could not imagine it,” Niko says. “I could not actually course of what occurred.”

Afterwards, Niko, Zoe and different college students gathered at a home to console one another, whereas a variety of academics from Animas Excessive College dropped by and supplied their assist. “We simply sort of sat there and cried for a number of days,” says Zoe.  

“All of us lived collectively for just a little bit, simply being shoulders for one another to cry on,” Niko provides. “It was a time the place the neighborhood actually did come collectively and present that we had the assist.”

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A number of months after their good friend’s funeral. Zoe took a category in regards to the Warfare on Medication throughout her junior 12 months. For his or her remaining undertaking, college students held a discussion board at Animas Excessive about hurt discount, which the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Providers Administration (SAMHSA) defines as an method to equip individuals who use medication with “life-saving instruments and data” to “probably save their lives.”

On the discussion board, Zoe says she needed to offer out Narcan, the model title of naloxone.

“I used to be speaking to my college about it, they usually’re like, ‘We need to try to assist you with this. Nonetheless, it’s sort of a legal responsibility to permit college students to hold Narcan for this, this, and this motive,’ ” Zoe remembers. “Clearly, I used to be just a little irritated about that. I used to be like, ‘Okay, nicely, can we alter the coverage?’ ” 

Niko and Zoe heard about different college students at neighboring Durango Excessive College who have been additionally pushing for change. Amongst them have been twin brothers Hays and Leo Stritikus, who didn’t know Niko and Zoe’s good friend, however have been impressed to take motion after listening to about his demise. Additionally they confronted pushback from the Durango college board over legal responsibility issues.

“Our neighborhood [in Durango] has a drug drawback,” Hays, now a 20-year-old school scholar, tells PEOPLE. “I feel loads of college students had a second the place they have been pressured to have a look at the truth of our drug drawback.”

Based on a January report from the New England Journal of Drugs, a mean of twenty-two college students within the U.S. of highschool age died from drug overdoses per week in 2022. Moreover, knowledge from the well being coverage group KFF discovered there have been 1,177 opioid overdose deaths in Colorado in 2022, making up 65 p.c of all drug overdose fatalities within the state. 

The coed activists from each colleges then joined forces as College students In opposition to Overdose.

For the following a number of months, they protested in entrance of the varsity district constructing, attended board conferences and garnered assist from mother and father and medical professionals. They additionally obtained opioid antagonists from their native public well being company, distributed them to their fellow college students and taught them learn how to use the remedy.

“The college district argued that academics are already ready and had Narcan,” Niko says. “However our argument was the academics aren’t going to be on the events [and] the skate park [where the students are]. Academics aren’t going to be the place the overdoses are literally going to occur.”

The scholars’ campaigning paid off and final 12 months the Durango college board voted to approve a coverage that has the district “assume the authorized threat of permitting college students to hold and use Narcan at college.”

“It was actually a giant second for all of us, to see one thing that had began as an thought between pals and between friends to be tailored by our faculty district after so lengthy advocating and preventing for it,” says Hays.

However it didn’t cease there. Subsequent, the coed activists reached out to Colo. State Rep. Barbara McLachlan and different lawmakers to assist them craft laws allowing college students throughout the state to have entry to naloxone and fentanyl check strips. “We have been like, ‘Wow, we will actually really make some change,’ ” remembers Niko. “We have been doing one thing that we felt was proper, and it simply grew and grew, and grew.”

“All final summer time, we dreamed up a invoice we needed to do,” provides Zoe. “I spent the varsity 12 months serving to write the invoice. We had conferences with completely different college nurses associations throughout Colorado and college board associations. We went via a minimum of 15 invoice drafts.”

Rep. McLachlan, a retired trainer, heard in regards to the scholar activists’ efforts in lobbying the Durango college board. “It was fairly the argument and fairly the work they needed to do as a result of it had by no means been performed earlier than,” she tells PEOPLE.

This 12 months, on Feb. 8, College students In opposition to Overdose testified in entrance of the Colorado Basic Meeting’s Home Committee on Schooling in assist of invoice HB24-1003, which permits college students to have and use opioid antagonists with out legal responsibility, and to make sure that opioid antagonists can be found in class buildings and college buses. 

“It was so surreal,” Niko remembers about addressing lawmakers. “This is without doubt one of the moments like, ‘Wow. We’re really making a change, and making a optimistic affect, and deciding that it is our flip to resolve what we need to do and resolve what’s necessary.’ ”

The invoice first handed within the Colorado Home in late February, then was authorized by the Colorado Senate in early April. The state’s lieutenant governor, Dianne Primavera, signed it into legislation on April 22 and the brand new laws went into impact on Wednesday, Aug, 7.

“They have been following their hearts,” McLachlan says. “Their good friend died, and as a substitute of simply saying, ‘Oh, that is too dangerous,’ they actually did one thing for it.”

Hays, who’s getting into his sophomore 12 months on the College of Richmond, says that he hopes the primary affect of the brand new laws is a discount in opioid-related deaths amongst highschool college students. “The second is we hope that this invoice can begin and foster broader conversations throughout the schooling system and inside communities in regards to the actuality of the opioid epidemic,” he says.

Niko and Zoe each acknowledge that the legislative victory is bittersweet. At Animas’ current commencement ceremony, an empty seat was put aside for his or her late good friend, which was adorned together with his belongings.

“We had a second of silence earlier than all of us began to stroll,” Zoe says. “I do know he is wanting over us. I do know he noticed what me and Niko did, and I do know he is pleased with us. We did it to honor him. So I am glad we did it.”

“We needed him to graduate with us,” remembers Niko. “That felt very particular. After I was strolling down [at the ceremony], I kissed my hand and tapped it a few occasions simply to honor him, letting him know that he is graduating with me.”

When you or somebody you recognize is combating substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.