Missouri has a GIANT issue with Child Fentanyl Deaths

Officials are responding to the shocking number of children who died of 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 revealing an alarming amount of children who died of a fentanyl overdose. The article claims that 20 children under the age of 5 died of fentanyl overdoses in 2022...just heartbreaking. How are officials responding?

In the article, they say "investigators either failed to adequately examine whether a parent was taking fentanyl or, in some cases, didn’t do enough to remove a child from a home after a mother and child tested positive for the drug in a hospital...recommendations include a more rigorous training regimen for investigators on how to spot fentanyl and treat the discovery of the drug as an imminent danger where law enforcement and juvenile officers get involved." To read more about the fentanyl crisis in Missouri, and how officials are planning on tackling the problem, click here! 

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Is this enough?

I will say that it is a great start, you need to train the people going into these homes on how to spot fentanyl and a user of fentanyl. I also think it is great to equate fentanyl use to any of the other hardcore drugs like heroin or crack. But Missouri needs to attack this problem with publicity, they need to spread the word to communities that if you are caught with this drug or are hospitalized with this drug in your system you will lose your children. It is just unfathomable that 20 kids under the age of 5 lost their lives because they were able to get ahold of this deadly drug, those kids deserved better, and hopefully, Missouri can cut that number down to 0 kids ASAP.