While the Hays County Sheriff’s Office has witnessed a decrease in fentanyl poisonings since 2022, a new wave of drugs is making its way to the county.
The Center for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) defines fentanyl as a “synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.” Janel Rodriguez defines fentanyl as the drug that poisoned and killed her son Noah Rodriguez as he was heading into his sophomore year at a high school in Buda in August 2022.
“We keep Noah’s memory alive by the work that we do with Forever15; going to schools and sharing his story and who he was because he didn’t always make the right choices, but letting kids know that there is help out there if they’re struggling,” Rodriguez said.
Hays Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) lost six kids to fentanyl poisoning in the 2022-23 school year. That number has been reduced to one student death last school year. All Hays CISD deaths have been caused by kids taking counterfeit pills they didn’t know were poisoned by fentanyl, Hays County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Anthony Hipolito said.
Hays County started with 37 fentanyl poisonings in 2022 and six so far in 2024. Out of the 37, six people died, and out of the six this year, four have died.
“We’re making a difference but it’s never going to go away. We’re going to continue to have poisonings in our community but our job is to keep it as close to zero as possible,” Hipolito said. “So we’re going to work tirelessly to do that; both on the street and educationally.”
A new wave of counterfeit drugs is approaching the county. According to Hipolito, those include subsets of fentanyl like carfentanil, as well as more dangerous drugs like the animal tranquilizer xylazine.
“[The cartel] is coming up with so many different ways to make their fentanyl and their drugs so powerful, and they don’t care if you live or die,” Hipolito said.
Hipolito said Narcan, the overdose-reversal nasal spray, is at the core of combating the fentanyl crisis. The county’s EMS, deputies and firefighters have Narcan on them at all times.
Narcan also plays a role in helping Hays CISD save students’ lives, according to the school district’s Chief Communications Officer Tim Savoy. In the 2022-23 school year, there were 11 on-campus Narcan administrations. This past school year, there were three on-campus administrations.
“We found sometimes the fentanyl is so powerful it takes two or three doses of Narcan to bring somebody out and we’ve had as many as four or five doses required to pull some of the kids out. So we have expanded the stock that we have on each campus,” Savoy said.
Hays CISD launched a comprehensive fentanyl awareness campaign in response to the 2022-23 surge in fentanyl-related deaths. Specifically because Savoy said four out of the six student deaths took place back-to-back into summer 2022.
But Savoy also said the work is never done.
“No poster or bumper sticker or graphic we can put on social media is going to make somebody say, ‘oh, you know what, I think I’m gonna stop.’ If you’re in a full blown addiction, then you need some intensive treatment help, and that’s been the challenge,” Savoy said.
Rodriguez said few treatment facilities in Hays County offer help to teenagers – the only one she knows of is Cenikor and its Buda location only constitutes out-patient care. So she developed relationships with rehabilitation centers in San Antonio and Houston to refer kids to.
“We’re not going to save everybody. I’m not okay with it, but I know we’re not,” Hipolito said. “But if we can save one person, I can sleep well at night knowing what we’re doing educationally is making a difference.”
