Three local high school students made an impassioned plea to the Okaloosa County School Board on Monday, urging officials to implement fentanyl education in schools. 

• Declan Harnett, Genesis Jimenez Chavez, and William Kiker, representing the non-profit organization Not Even Once (NEO), talked of the dangers of the synthetic opioid fentanyl and the lack of awareness among their peers. 

“In 2021, there were more than 106,000 drug related deaths. 68% of those deaths were caused by fentanyl,” said Harnett, a Crestview resident and local student. “It kills within 5 minutes, and it’s unable to be seen.” 

Harnett noted fentanyl’s potency – just the size of a pen tip can be lethal. It’s often mixed with other illicit and prescription drugs unbeknownst to users. 

• “It can sneak up on you, and be found in things like Xanax, Adderall, nasal sprays, small candies, vapes…it’s in everything,” Harnett said. 

Chavez, also of Crestview, cited local statistics from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office showing around 40 fentanyl-related overdoses in the county in both 2021 and 2022 so far. She said Florida’s 1st Congressional District has the highest per capita fentanyl overdose deaths as of 2023. 

“Today we stand before you terrified for our youth,” Chavez told the board. “Our teens are being killed by counterfeit pills distributed on apps like Snapchat that are indistinguishable for even Drug Enforcement Administration agents.”

Kiker focused his remarks on solutions, specifically NEO’s in-school assemblies that educate students about fentanyl. He asked for a meeting with Superintendent Marcus Chambers to discuss bringing the 20-minute interactive assemblies to Okaloosa schools.

• “If you ask the average student in Okaloosa County schools, ‘What is fentanyl?’ They’ll say, ‘I have no idea.’ That is a failure on our part to educate students,” Kiker said. 

In response, Superintendent Marcus Chambers and the School Board commended the students for their advocacy and Chambers agreed to meet with them. 

“I think we all know fentanyl is something we take seriously,” Chambers said, referencing previous fentanyl presentations to the board. “It’s always great when we can get student voices on something this important.”

The NEO students said they hope increased education will prevent experimental pill use among their peers. “Our mission is to inform students about lethal fentanyl so that they never experiment with pills, not even once,” Chavez told the board.