Fentanyl Tragedy at Day Care Center: What Parents Need to Know
Our hearts are broken with the news that a one-year-old boy died and three other small children were hospitalized after consuming fentanyl at a Bronx day care. We are still learning all the details of this horrific story, but we immediately called Jason Curtis Anderson to ask what do NYC parents need to know about the fentanyl crisis and how we can protect our kids.
Jason wrote the most viral article about NYC during COVID and he continues to do excellent reporting about local issues of crime, addiction, and homelessness on his substack Working Class Intellectual.
Our Talk with Jason Curtis Anderson
How Could This Happen?
FFNY: Jason, you have been reporting on the fentanyl crisis in our city for many years. Were you surprised with the news that kids at a daycare were exposed to this drug (and one child actually died)? Is fentanyl so present in our daily lives as New Yorkers?
JASON: I hate to say this, but I was not surprised at all to read this story. As soon as OnPointNYC officially “opened” its overdose prevention center I began to see the outrage from neighborhood parents about how much worse the entire area had become. A mother who lived an entire 10 blocks away said that her street was still within the impacted zone and that it was like a bomb had gone off in the area with all of the syringes. She began posting photos on Twitter of syringes in her local children's playground, and near the entrance of her child’s elementary school. I included her horrors in a story for the NYPost, but it’s pretty obvious that no one cares.
Last year a 10-month-old baby overdosed on fentanyl at a playground in San Francisco. Someone also sent me a photo from a public park in Washington Heights that had a receptacle for used syringes. There was a note from the city on it asking drug users to kindly clean up after themselves. NYC is really seeing an explosion of public drug use that’s reminiscent of the 1980s crack era, except with 2023 prices.
It doesn't matter how much rent you pay, what neighborhood you live in, or what fancy restaurant you are eating at - the chances of bumping into someone strung out on fentanyl, homeless, or having a psychotic breakdown in public is the new norm.
FFNY: What are the most important things for parents to know about fentanyl in NYC so they can protect their little ones?
JASON: I think it’s important for all kids to understand that fentanyl has poisoned the entire drug supply, and everything about drug use has changed for their generation. Any conclusions made based on the norms of the past are no longer applicable. They look at drug experimentation in the same way that previous generations looked at it, like a ladder of risk.
Alcohol and marijuana are traditionally at the bottom and considered the most low-risk and socially acceptable. Next in the ladder would probably come prescription pills only because they are legally produced by big pharma, then psychedelics like mushrooms, acid, and ecstasy that are disorienting but still not highly associated with overdose deaths. Heroin, crack, and cocaine are traditionally considered the top of the ladder, and tend to scare most people experimenting with drugs.
Kids try to make sense of drugs like a hierarchy of risk. It makes sense for them to think about it like this, but fentanyl has changed everything, and parents absolutely must unpack this for children. The risk of not doing it is way too high.
Kids need to understand that the entire drug supply is poisoned with fentanyl. There’s pills that look like xanax or oxycontin but are really fentanyl, cocaine laced with fentanyl, even weed laced with fentanyl. A friend of a friend recently passed away from fentanyl laced weed in Brooklyn. He met some guys at a bar, they invited him outside to smoke a joint and he agreed. He was one of those people who only drank and smoked weed, someone who spent their whole lives scared of harder drugs.
There was also a recent story about an A-list actor’s grandson passing away from a fentanyl overdose who most likely did not know he was actually consuming fentanyl. This is the thing that kids need to understand. They think that because they tried a pill once, that the next pill will be the same experience. That they can trust it.
They absolutely cannot, and it's imperative for parents to help them understand this risk. Drugs are more dangerous now than they have ever been, and kids need the tools to navigate this new minefield. In fact, one recent report from the DEA claims that 6 out of 10 pills circulating the drug market now contain a potentially lethal dose of Fentanyl.
FFNY: One of us has teenager kids, what is your advice for parents about drug use in the city?
JASON: I would say that it’s important for parents to talk to their kids and convince them that everything has changed. For example, the THC content in marijuana was typically between 3-5% forever, up until the 1990s when people began experiments to increase potency.
Now marijuana can be up to 40% THC while the oils found in weed pens are 90% THC. This drastic increase in psychoactive strength means that everything we know about how marijuana affected the cognitive abilities of previous generations goes out the window. Essentially, our grandparents' generation were actually smoking much less harmful marijuana, and we will not know the long-term consequences of normalizing this new high-potency marijuana usage until it’s too late.
High-potency marijuana has a more rapid addiction progression (cannabis use disorder). The increase in cannabis use disorder amongst adolescents is leading to an increase in psychosis cases which then lead to a higher probability of developing schizophrenia, a lifelong disorder of the brain. In order to remain stable one has to be on medication for life.
FFNY: We are all about taking action to improve NYC, what can we all do to help stop this crisis in NYC?
The city needs to enforce the legislation that keeps smoke shops away from children's schools. Top priority of any civilized society must always be to protect the youth.
We have to pressure the city into making consequences for fentanyl dealers much more serious. There should be a culture of fear around getting caught selling fentanyl, a culture of fear that’s worse than getting caught with a gun. I keep reading stories about fentanyl dealers being released without bail by Alvin Bragg. Considering how dangerous fentanyl is in such small doses, fentanyl dealers are the most dangerous people walking the streets of NYC. They are the dealers of death, preying upon our people, our city, our children, and they do not deserve our mercy and compassion. What is good for us and what is good for them are absolute polar opposites.
Parents need to educate children about the complex path that lies ahead of them. The world is changing fast, the workplace for high paying jobs is shrinking, and the job market now demands more intellectual capacity than ever before. Parents have to guide the conversation about drug experimentation to be about young people protecting their brain for their future careers, and what a precious resource this is.
Young males need to know that the recent studies show the correlation between cannabis use disorder and schizophrenia specifically affect the young male brain more than the female brain. The risk is worse for men under 30, and the last thing our country needs is even more men slowly inducing themselves into mental illness as they enter adulthood.
Parents need to convince children that being able to trust a local black market drug supplier is both a myth and absolutely insane. The chain of command is basically that someone knows a guy, who knows a guy, who gets it from a drug cartel. The drug cartels are purposefully steering the black market in this direction because fentanyl is cheaper to make, easier to make, and more addictive than any drug we’ve ever known. The culture of America’s youth experimenting with drugs must change from a culture of “I have a right to experiment like previous generations did” to a culture of “the drug supply has been poisoned and I need to protect these poisons from getting into my brain.”