On August 23, all classes at Oakmont High School were cautioned about the risks of taking pills that may look like they are prescription.

“This epidemic is advanced, swift, and fatal – four in ten pills purchased in the online marketplace are deadly,” Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said.

Fentanyl is now the leading cause of teen deaths in the United States. It is easy for teens to find pills for sale on social media apps such as Snapchat or Instagram. People take these pills, not knowing the contents, and sometimes end up dead due to the very small amounts of Fentanyl contained in the pill. 

These pills laced with Fentanyl look exactly like prescription pills such as Xanax or Percocet, but actually have [deadly amounts of Fentanyl. Teens might take these pills because they are trying to numb their stress, anxiety, or depression. 

At the assembly,students heard the story of Chris and Laura Didier. “We can’t protect Zach now, but hopefully we can protect someone else’s child.”

Laura and Chris’s son, Zach, attended Whitney High School and died from a Fentanyl-laced pill when he was 17. He purchased this pill off of Snapchat thinking it was a Percocet pill.

It is impossible to tell pills apart and Placer County is doing its best to inform students about the high risks of buying pills off of social media. Hopefully, this pushes kids to have these serious talks with their parents about their issues and the dangers of Fentanyl.

Freshman Taavi Sevillano said he learned that “even a few milligrams of Fentanyl can kill you.”

It is important for the school to educate high schoolers about the dangers of drugs, especially if their parents don’t have a serious conversation with their kids about the deadly consequences of experimenting with drugs.

Placer county has had a 450% increase in Fentanyl deaths from 2018 to 2021. Nearly half of the deaths have been in people under 25 years old. That is why it is so important for teens to know how dangerous buying and taking pills can be.