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Anti-drug abuse advocates seeing an increase in childhood overdoses
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BATON ROUGE — East Baton Rouge Parish leaders said they have seen an increase in young children overdosing on drugs, specifically fentanyl, over the last couple of months.
Mental health and drug abuse expert Tonja Myles said she had never seen anything like this before.
“When we start seeing the reports of infants, five-month-olds, seven-month-olds, 12-month-olds were being admitted to the hospital with drugs in their system this is alarming,” Myles said.
East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore said at least a half dozen young children were brought to the hospital for drug overdoses in the past couple of months.
“Because it’s such a small amount that’s needed for adults, one that’s even used to drugs, but when you have a small child that’s five months old seeing them overdose on fentanyl it’s something that you have to be aware of and we have to take some action and make this aware,” Moore said.
East Baton Rouge Coroner Beau Clark said he has seen a decline in fentanyl overdose deaths this year, but he has dealt with some child overdose deaths.
He said there are many ways children can get ahold of the drugs and some babies are born with it.
"A lot of the time when we see babies they are born addicted because of maternal use of opioids so they'll go into withdrawal syndrome right after birth that needs to be managed and treated by the hospital," Clark said.
Myles said she is teaming up with other advocates to prevent the numbers from rising.
"We don't want to lose our kids to drugs, we don't want to lose anyone to drugs. Particularly when it's an infant child we have to address it and we have to act fast," Myles said.
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