The parents of two Wisconsin college students who died from fentanyl overdoses are speaking out calling fentanyl overdoses a “public health crisis.” The two students who died in unrelated incidents were freshmen, living in the same dorm at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison.
According to his parents, Cade Reddington, an 18-year-old who died in November, thought he was given Percocet, an opioid pain pill, while at a bar. However, after taking the pill, he died the next day of an overdose of fentanyl.
“These kids need to be better educated,” Michelle Kullmann, Reddington’s mother, told Wisc News. “It’s a public health crisis, and people are not talking about it.”
Kullmann told Wisc News she believes that Narcan kits, which help stop drug overdoses, “should be more available on all campuses” and that “fentanyl testing strips, which can identify fentanyl in drugs, should be decriminalized.”
The other student, 19-year-old Logan Rachwal, was in a similar situation, purchasing what he thought was Percocet as well. Rachwal died from an overdose in February, and his death was also linked to fentanyl.
Students on college campuses “don’t know what’s going on,” said Erin Rachwal, Logan Rachwal’s mother, told Wisc News, agreeing with Kullmann that a lack of education is a huge part of the problem.
Wisc News reported that “UW-Madison had 21 deaths of degree-seeking students caused by alcohol or other drug abuse from 2000 to 2018, the latest year for which statistics are available, McGlone said. Seven were classified as suicide and 14 as unintentional overdoses, she said.”
The explosion in drug overdoses led UW Oshkosh to implement programs to prevent it. Wisconsin Public Radio reported, “The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is the first state campus to install opioid overdose kits in residence halls and campus buildings. The ‘Nalox-Zone’ boxes aim to make the lifesaving drug, Narcan, more accessible to campus and the greater Oshkosh community.”
The fentanyl crisis is growing, not just in Wisconsin but nationwide. The Tennessee Star reported that “a nonprofit group [now] cites fentanyl as the leading cause of death among Americans between the age of 18 and 45.”
According to the report from the group, there were 81,500 deaths attributed to fentanyl poisoning in 2020 and 2021, and “a record high of 100,000 accidental drug overdose deaths in 2021.”
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Hayley Feland is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun and The Wisconsin Daily Star | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
