Our Readers Write: Opioid emergency kits, kayak tours, street repairs
Letters to the editor:
Schools must install opioid emergency kits throughout campus
Drug abuse is something that affects all of us, and the stakes are higher today because just one fentanyl-laced pill can kill.
Drug education is not happening in schools at a level that it should. Fentanyl is being disguised as candy and marketed to our children through social media, and kids are overdosing and dying.
Parents need to pressure middle and high school administrators to install opioid emergency kits throughout campus to respond to accidental overdoses. Although kits may exist on some school campuses, many more need to be installed.
In San Diego, the number of accidental opioid overdoses has gone up by 33 percent. Twelve children under age 18 died from fentanyl overdoses in San Diego County in 2021.
Many San Diego school administrators and nurses are trained and equipped with the opioid reversal medication naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, but when it comes to a student opioid overdose, seconds count, so quick and easy access to Narcan is critical.
Schools have automated external defibrillators (AEDs), and state law requires fire extinguishers strategically located throughout the campus. But students are not dying because of school fires or heart attacks, they are dying from opioid overdoses. So let’s also include the same number of opioid emergency kits throughout our school campuses.
A decade ago, we didn’t even know about fentanyl and now it’s a national crisis. Calling on our schools to install additional opioid emergency kits throughout the campus may not prevent students from experimenting with drugs, but it could save a student’s life.
Mark Powell
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Kayak tours need to be more considerate
It seems like at all hours of the day, kayak tours are monopolizing the caves near The Cove. As someone who paddleboards multiple times a week, there needs to be some sort of regulation or at least consideration on the part of these tours.
Some kayak renters are so inexperienced that they will literally bump other boats or paddleboards or, even worse, snorkelers in the water. It also makes it incredibly difficult for any locals who have their own kayaks or boards to enter the cave because you could have two or three tours crowded around the entrance at one time.
While I fully support them giving tours, as it allows tourists to see the beauty of La Jolla, they need to be a bit more considerate with the amount of people they have in the water at a given time.
Will Rickard
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Still waiting for street repairs
Despite meetings with employees of the city of San Diego, a neighborhood email/letter campaign and past postings of photos in the La Jolla Light, our streets remain filled with potholes. Some have not been redone in over 35 years.
Is there anything we can do to make our roads safer to navigate?
Lisa Casey
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What’s on YOUR mind?
Letters published in the La Jolla Light express views from readers about community matters. Submissions of related photos also are welcome. Letters reflect the writers’ opinions and not necessarily those of the newspaper staff or publisher. Letters are subject to editing. To share your thoughts in this public forum, email them with your first and last names and city or neighborhood of residence to robert.vardon@lajollalight.com. You also can submit a letter online at lajollalight.com/submit-a-letter-to-the-editor. The deadline is 10 a.m. Monday for publication in that week’s paper. Letters without the writer’s name cannot be published. Letters from the same person are limited to one in a 30-day period. ◆
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