HOPE Initiative – Prevention and Education Presentation at Sandia High School

Smart on Crime AUSA  Henderson, a DEA Agent and UNM College of Pharmacy students (Generation Rx) collaborated on a opioid presentation to student athletes (soccer) and coaches at Sandia High School as part of the HOPE Initiative’s prevention and education component.  This is HOPE’s first step towards developing an outreach program for high school and middle school athletes, coaches and athletic directors – an important audience given evidence showing that athletes who become heroin addicts often begin their descent into addiction by taking opioid painkillers for sports-related injuries.  The student athletes were stunned when the DEA Agent told them that she has had five informants, including three who are now dead, who had been high school soccer players and became heroin addicts after they were prescribed opioids for sports-related injuries.