Missouri has a huge problem with fentanyl-related child deaths

Officials are responding to the shocking number of children dying from fentanyl overdoses, but is their plan strong enough to help prevent future deaths? Here are the details…

According to an article from stlpr.org, Missouri officials are changing the way they report the presence of fentanyl in homes due to recent data showing an alarming number of children have died from fentanyl overdoses. The article claims that 20 children under the age of five will die from fentanyl overdoses in 2022…just heartbreaking. How do officials respond?

In the article they say “Researchers failed to adequately investigate whether a parent used fentanyl, or in some cases did not do enough to remove a child from the home after a mother and child tested positive for the drug at a hospital… The recommendations include a more rigorous training regimen for investigators on how to spot fentanyl and how to treat the discovery of the drug as an imminent threat involving law enforcement and youth officers.” Click here to read more about Missouri’s fentanyl crisis and how officials plan to address the problem!

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Is this enough?

I will say it’s a good start, you need to train the people who are going into these homes to recognize fentanyl and a fentanyl user. I also think it’s great to equate fentanyl use with other hardcore drugs like heroin or crack. But Missouri needs to address this problem with publicity, they need to get the message out to the communities that if you are caught with this drug or hospitalized with this drug in your system, you will lose your children. It is simply unfathomable that twenty children under the age of five lost their lives because they got their hands on this deadly drug. Those kids deserved better, and hopefully Missouri can get that number down to zero as soon as possible.