It’s no secret that our country is facing an opioid crisis, but not many people realize this is a growing issue in our own community at the University. 

During the pandemic, the number of drug overdoses skyrocketed. Isolation combined with grief and fear drove many people to drugs. Overall, our country reached a record-breaking number of overdose deaths in May 2020.
In 2020, 245 residents died of overdoses in East Baton Rouge. There have already been 21 more overdose deaths in our community since the start of 2021.
The University should be taking an active role in helping our community decrease the rising number of drug overdoses in East Baton Rouge Parish.  

Drug abuse has not received the attention it deserves, so few  are aware that it is even a problem in our community. This is an issue that the University should treat proactively rather than reactively. Although college students are a heavily impacted demographic of drug usage, many schools, including our own, do not join local authorities’ efforts in combating drug addiction.

The University has even lost multiple students to drug overdoses that seem to be swept under the rug. In 2017, a 21-year-old student died of an overdose after ingesting fentanyl-laced Xanax pills. In total, eight students at our University have died of drug overdoses since 2015. 

There are very few resources for students struggling with addiction. Even the survey the University forces freshmen and faculty to complete is a waste of time if there are no follow-up procedures to make sure we stay on the right path or guide us back to safety if we fall off track. 

The East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office recently partnered with the University’s Social Research and Evaluation Center to further dissect the crisis in our community.

This is a great step in the right direction, but our community deserves a more active approach from University officials. 

No one likes to address drug-related issues and addiction, especially if they can’t see it in our community. However, this is something that has affected students on campus in the past. It is only a matter of time before another tragedy occurs.

According to the Addiction Center, stimulants like ecstasy and Adderall have been the primary choices for college students, along with benzodiazepines like Xanax. College students also consume these drugs with alcohol, a contributing factor in many of these accidental overdoses. This is the type of behavior that is killing our peers mentally and physically. 

The University should require all students to complete the survey each semester to ensure reinforcement. But that’s not enough. It should also hold more open seminars to educate our community of the dangers of these drugs.

The University has a responsibility to do more to actively address the growing problem on campus rather than wait for it to hurt more of our students. This is our community and we cannot allow drugs to infiltrate and destroy our neighborhoods.
Tamia Southall is a 20-year-old mass communication junior from New Orleans.