good morning everybody so I am a
clinical pharmacist by training I’m also
a professor here at the Whitman School
of Pharmacy and since we are sitting
here in this wonderful College campus I
thought it’d be a good idea to start
today’s talk a little bit of pop quiz so
the audience you only have to get
anything out but please raise your hand
if you can you only know the answer to
the following questions so we’ll start
with what is a life-threatening side
effect of taking too much acetaminophen
I see about half two hands up
how about what drug class does the drug
naproxen belong to only a few hands also
can you take the proxy at the same time
as ibuprofen I don’t see I see a few
hands what does the potentially
life-saving medication we give to
somebody who’s experiencing anaphylaxis
I see about maybe two-thirds that hands
up and then finally what medication can
help reverse an opioid overdose again
I’d say about 75% so you looked around
and you saw who raised their hands so
now imagine you’re a 16 year old in a
10th grade I can make the argument that
16 year olds have not only just as much
access to medications but more access to
medication that we do as adults because
I can tell you that personally I am NOT
going through my parents or my friend’s
parents medicine cabinet looking for
pills to take and I also don’t know
where to go on the street to buy a list
of medications so for anybody who went
to grade school between let’s say the
mid 1980s and the mid 2000s you may have
been exposed to the DARE program so Dare
stands for drug abuse resistance
education and what they did is they took
local law enforcement and brought them
into classrooms and tried to promote a
100% drug-free Society
the problem with Dare is that there was
a lot of data that came out in the mid
99
that showed how ineffective it was and
we have a little bit of data to support
that so this is from the monitoring the
future study from our friends at the
University of Michigan what they do is
they surveyed upwards of 50,000 high
school students every year under
tendencies of drug use and substance
abuse and so the red dots here indicate
that upwards of 50% of 12th graders
survey report that they have used at
least one illegal drug in their lifetime
50% that’s one out of every two seniors
admit to using an illicit medication
furthermore the red line the red dots
here indicate that upwards of 80% of
12th graders can obtain these substances
either fairly easily or barely very
easily so that’s pretty much all of our
high school seniors have access to these
substances so it’s important for us to
understand that and embrace this culture
what Dare did was the focus too much on
the lecturing of not to do something and
they tried to earn students with skills
and the confidence to remove themselves
from situations which is a great
attention but unfortunately it shows
that it wasn’t very effective so here
spongebob is saying one of my least
favorite phrases in the English language
and that’s because I said so so I know
we can all think back to when we were
kids and our parents wanted us to do
something that we didn’t necessarily
want them to do want us to do and we ate
every argument that we could we thought
we made a great argument and all of a
sudden they would shut down the
conversation and say because I said so
now I’m about you but that often times
made me feel a little bit jaded I might
have gotten angry at that it might have
actually pushed me in the opposite
direction and to that a couple dear
studies actually shown that the DARE
program by just lecturing on not
do something and not saying why not to
do it can actually push students in the
opposite direction so what I like to
focus on with my students in the
classroom is to ask why three times in
my field it’s not enough just to know
that something is we answer we need to
know why it’s the answer so if a student
comes to me and says dr. Sachs my
patient is on the drug lisinopril I
would say why are they on the Cenacle
they would most likely say because they
have hypertension also known as high
blood pressure and I would say why would
they pick lisinopril there’s literally
50 different medications you can use to
treat high blood pressure
why did they pick that up and then they
would probably say well the guy when
it’s recommended dr. Zach and I would
say why do the duck guidelines recommend
it and then hopefully they come back at
me and say well there are some studies
that came out that showed that in
patients with diabetes people who take
the cynical actually live longer and my
patient has diabetes and high blood
pressure
aha there is the why there’s the reason
why they chose this specific drug over
the the other 50 that they could have
chosen so I hope you can start
incorporating that into your own lives
don’t just know that something’s the
answer asked why three times so I want
students in middle school high school to
know that we take too much acetaminophen
whether acutely or chronically it could
lead to life-threatening liver failure
and I want them to know that this could
also happen by accident how does this
happen by accident
acetaminophen is one of the most common
medications that’s out there it’s in a
bunch of over-the-counter and
prescription medications if you’re not
careful and not reading the label about
what you put into your body over time
you can be getting more acetaminophen
that your body can handle and it can
actually lead to some very severe liver
failure I want students know that
naproxen belongs to the class of emsac
also known as a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen also
belongs to the unset class and taking
both of them at the same time isn’t
gonna do anything to improve your pain
but it’s going to greatly increase
the chance for serious side effects with
NSAIDs we’re worried about leading into
your stomach at best this could be to
severe pain you know worse it can be it
can be done I want students to know that
epinephrine
often times sold as an EpiPen is what we
give patients who are experiencing
anaphylactic reaction I also want
students to know how to use it I also
want spools to be stocked with this
either in the nurse’s office or in the
principal’s office because those who
suffer from very severe anaphylactic
reactions and have very severe
life-threatening allergies they’ve all
had their first reaction and unless
you’ve never had that reaction you’re
not going to have that a nephron on your
person so we want that available in
schools and I would even argue in common
public places so when somebody starts
having this first severe reaction we
could potentially save the life I want
students to know that naloxone also
known as narcan if the medication that
we give to patients who are experiencing
a hair rig heroin or other opioid
overdose I also want them to know that
in the state of New York there is a
standing order that says anybody can go
to a participating community pharmacy
and there’s over 2,000 in the state of
New York and you can purchase a narcan
without a prescription so if you or one
of your loved ones or friends uses
opioids then it would be a smart idea to
have it on your person in case something
bad were to happen this could also help
save a life so here we have mr. Mackey
from South Park who likes to tell us
that broke the ban her not the best mr.
man confession but mr Mackey we it’s not
enough to know that drugs are bad we
need to know why the bad in fact I want
students to know that cannabis in its
pure form most likely has some sort of
medicinal properties to it problem is we
don’t know how much to give we don’t
know who to give it to and we don’t know
how to give it because it still remains
a level one
1 controlled substance at the federal
level and it’s near impossible to study
I also want them to be told repeatedly
that the cannabis that they buy on the
street most likely is not pure cannabis
most likely contains some very harmful
and addictive substances and it is never
a good idea to put substances in your
body that you don’t know exactly where
they came from I want students in high
school to know how heroin works in the
body and the biochemistry of both mental
and physical addiction I want to know
how to use narcan and I want them to
know that just because their friends
tried something once and they were okay
does not mean that they can try the same
thing and they’ll be ok
also if they’ve tried something before
once and they’re okay
does not mean that you can do it again
and be ok you can become addicted or you
can die the very first time you use any
of these substances so what do I think
what should a medication educational aid
for today so here’s me I’m in a 8th
grade a local 8th grade health class
and I believe I’m explaining to this
young man right here the concept of
receptors and what happens when a drug
molecule binds to a receptor so I go
into these classrooms for five straight
days the length is important because we
were all in school before we know what
happened to be able to substitute
teacher it’s almost like heart launch to
just mentally check out and not pay
attention to what’s going on and we know
that this topic is way too important for
kids to start checking out not only am i
giving them this this education in this
information on these substances I want
to answer the questions they have and
believe me they have questions so at the
end of day one or two I might not get
all the questions from them but once
they start building a rapport with me on
day three or four dads and all the
questions start coming out it’s been a
long time since I’ve been in high school
so I don’t know exactly what’s going on
I need them to tell me one of the
craziest questions I ever got from the
student in 12th grade was so you need to
tell me that when you’re at a party and
there’s a bowl full of pills on the
table that her business
from but that’s a bad idea yes that is a
bad idea for a number of reasons and let
me tell you why I also want students to
know what good mental health looks like
we’re lucky not to be in a society
nowadays that is more more welcoming of
the concept of mental health and
admitting that you need help I want them
to be exposed to the common
neurotransmitters in the brain serotonin
norepinephrine and dopamine and that
just a slight imbalance and just one of
those can lead somebody to feel sad or
anxious and then it’s not their fault
that they feel that way once you start
taking the stigma off a feeling anxious
oppressed you empower students to come
forward and say I mean how and once you
do that it can stop living with the
condition that they don’t need to be
living with there’s a lot of things well
using medications and not using
medications we can do to help with that
better yet we can potentially help them
from hurting themselves or potentially
others sometimes the future so back to a
pop quiz what does the life-threatening
effect of taking too much see the
benefit it’s liver failure and we need
to know that it can happen by accident
also because the Sina benefit is in a
variety of over-the-counter and
prescription medications but if you’re
not careful over time you could be
taking too much and lead to some severe
side effects we should know that the
drug naproxen is a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drug also known as an
NSAID and then you cannot take it at the
same time side of broken because it does
not do anything for your pain control
but greatly increases the risk for
serious side effects namely bleeding
into your stomach should you take out
your open at the same time of course not
because we just talked about that what
is it potentially life-saving medication
that would give to someone experiencing
anaphylaxis
it’s epinephrine students should know
how to give it teachers should know how
to give it and it should be stopped in
classrooms and common public areas and
what is the medication that can help
reverse an opioid overdose it’s naloxone
also known as narcan and we should need
to know that we can buy this from over
2,000 community pharmacies that
participate in the program through a
standing order with
prescription so if you know somebody or
utor suffer a user to have this on your
person can help save the life so
hopefully my talk today is that I’m
thinking about your own knowledge about
these medication and illicit substances
and this helps highlight how important
it is to start our me our middle school
and high school students with this
knowledge it’s not enough anymore to say
to not do something we need to give them
the why and if somebody still doesn’t
understand how important is just this
one time I give you permission to say because I says
clinical pharmacist by training I’m also
a professor here at the Whitman School
of Pharmacy and since we are sitting
here in this wonderful College campus I
thought it’d be a good idea to start
today’s talk a little bit of pop quiz so
the audience you only have to get
anything out but please raise your hand
if you can you only know the answer to
the following questions so we’ll start
with what is a life-threatening side
effect of taking too much acetaminophen
I see about half two hands up
how about what drug class does the drug
naproxen belong to only a few hands also
can you take the proxy at the same time
as ibuprofen I don’t see I see a few
hands what does the potentially
life-saving medication we give to
somebody who’s experiencing anaphylaxis
I see about maybe two-thirds that hands
up and then finally what medication can
help reverse an opioid overdose again
I’d say about 75% so you looked around
and you saw who raised their hands so
now imagine you’re a 16 year old in a
10th grade I can make the argument that
16 year olds have not only just as much
access to medications but more access to
medication that we do as adults because
I can tell you that personally I am NOT
going through my parents or my friend’s
parents medicine cabinet looking for
pills to take and I also don’t know
where to go on the street to buy a list
of medications so for anybody who went
to grade school between let’s say the
mid 1980s and the mid 2000s you may have
been exposed to the DARE program so Dare
stands for drug abuse resistance
education and what they did is they took
local law enforcement and brought them
into classrooms and tried to promote a
100% drug-free Society
the problem with Dare is that there was
a lot of data that came out in the mid
99
that showed how ineffective it was and
we have a little bit of data to support
that so this is from the monitoring the
future study from our friends at the
University of Michigan what they do is
they surveyed upwards of 50,000 high
school students every year under
tendencies of drug use and substance
abuse and so the red dots here indicate
that upwards of 50% of 12th graders
survey report that they have used at
least one illegal drug in their lifetime
50% that’s one out of every two seniors
admit to using an illicit medication
furthermore the red line the red dots
here indicate that upwards of 80% of
12th graders can obtain these substances
either fairly easily or barely very
easily so that’s pretty much all of our
high school seniors have access to these
substances so it’s important for us to
understand that and embrace this culture
what Dare did was the focus too much on
the lecturing of not to do something and
they tried to earn students with skills
and the confidence to remove themselves
from situations which is a great
attention but unfortunately it shows
that it wasn’t very effective so here
spongebob is saying one of my least
favorite phrases in the English language
and that’s because I said so so I know
we can all think back to when we were
kids and our parents wanted us to do
something that we didn’t necessarily
want them to do want us to do and we ate
every argument that we could we thought
we made a great argument and all of a
sudden they would shut down the
conversation and say because I said so
now I’m about you but that often times
made me feel a little bit jaded I might
have gotten angry at that it might have
actually pushed me in the opposite
direction and to that a couple dear
studies actually shown that the DARE
program by just lecturing on not
do something and not saying why not to
do it can actually push students in the
opposite direction so what I like to
focus on with my students in the
classroom is to ask why three times in
my field it’s not enough just to know
that something is we answer we need to
know why it’s the answer so if a student
comes to me and says dr. Sachs my
patient is on the drug lisinopril I
would say why are they on the Cenacle
they would most likely say because they
have hypertension also known as high
blood pressure and I would say why would
they pick lisinopril there’s literally
50 different medications you can use to
treat high blood pressure
why did they pick that up and then they
would probably say well the guy when
it’s recommended dr. Zach and I would
say why do the duck guidelines recommend
it and then hopefully they come back at
me and say well there are some studies
that came out that showed that in
patients with diabetes people who take
the cynical actually live longer and my
patient has diabetes and high blood
pressure
aha there is the why there’s the reason
why they chose this specific drug over
the the other 50 that they could have
chosen so I hope you can start
incorporating that into your own lives
don’t just know that something’s the
answer asked why three times so I want
students in middle school high school to
know that we take too much acetaminophen
whether acutely or chronically it could
lead to life-threatening liver failure
and I want them to know that this could
also happen by accident how does this
happen by accident
acetaminophen is one of the most common
medications that’s out there it’s in a
bunch of over-the-counter and
prescription medications if you’re not
careful and not reading the label about
what you put into your body over time
you can be getting more acetaminophen
that your body can handle and it can
actually lead to some very severe liver
failure I want students know that
naproxen belongs to the class of emsac
also known as a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen also
belongs to the unset class and taking
both of them at the same time isn’t
gonna do anything to improve your pain
but it’s going to greatly increase
the chance for serious side effects with
NSAIDs we’re worried about leading into
your stomach at best this could be to
severe pain you know worse it can be it
can be done I want students to know that
epinephrine
often times sold as an EpiPen is what we
give patients who are experiencing
anaphylactic reaction I also want
students to know how to use it I also
want spools to be stocked with this
either in the nurse’s office or in the
principal’s office because those who
suffer from very severe anaphylactic
reactions and have very severe
life-threatening allergies they’ve all
had their first reaction and unless
you’ve never had that reaction you’re
not going to have that a nephron on your
person so we want that available in
schools and I would even argue in common
public places so when somebody starts
having this first severe reaction we
could potentially save the life I want
students to know that naloxone also
known as narcan if the medication that
we give to patients who are experiencing
a hair rig heroin or other opioid
overdose I also want them to know that
in the state of New York there is a
standing order that says anybody can go
to a participating community pharmacy
and there’s over 2,000 in the state of
New York and you can purchase a narcan
without a prescription so if you or one
of your loved ones or friends uses
opioids then it would be a smart idea to
have it on your person in case something
bad were to happen this could also help
save a life so here we have mr. Mackey
from South Park who likes to tell us
that broke the ban her not the best mr.
man confession but mr Mackey we it’s not
enough to know that drugs are bad we
need to know why the bad in fact I want
students to know that cannabis in its
pure form most likely has some sort of
medicinal properties to it problem is we
don’t know how much to give we don’t
know who to give it to and we don’t know
how to give it because it still remains
a level one
1 controlled substance at the federal
level and it’s near impossible to study
I also want them to be told repeatedly
that the cannabis that they buy on the
street most likely is not pure cannabis
most likely contains some very harmful
and addictive substances and it is never
a good idea to put substances in your
body that you don’t know exactly where
they came from I want students in high
school to know how heroin works in the
body and the biochemistry of both mental
and physical addiction I want to know
how to use narcan and I want them to
know that just because their friends
tried something once and they were okay
does not mean that they can try the same
thing and they’ll be ok
also if they’ve tried something before
once and they’re okay
does not mean that you can do it again
and be ok you can become addicted or you
can die the very first time you use any
of these substances so what do I think
what should a medication educational aid
for today so here’s me I’m in a 8th
grade a local 8th grade health class
and I believe I’m explaining to this
young man right here the concept of
receptors and what happens when a drug
molecule binds to a receptor so I go
into these classrooms for five straight
days the length is important because we
were all in school before we know what
happened to be able to substitute
teacher it’s almost like heart launch to
just mentally check out and not pay
attention to what’s going on and we know
that this topic is way too important for
kids to start checking out not only am i
giving them this this education in this
information on these substances I want
to answer the questions they have and
believe me they have questions so at the
end of day one or two I might not get
all the questions from them but once
they start building a rapport with me on
day three or four dads and all the
questions start coming out it’s been a
long time since I’ve been in high school
so I don’t know exactly what’s going on
I need them to tell me one of the
craziest questions I ever got from the
student in 12th grade was so you need to
tell me that when you’re at a party and
there’s a bowl full of pills on the
table that her business
from but that’s a bad idea yes that is a
bad idea for a number of reasons and let
me tell you why I also want students to
know what good mental health looks like
we’re lucky not to be in a society
nowadays that is more more welcoming of
the concept of mental health and
admitting that you need help I want them
to be exposed to the common
neurotransmitters in the brain serotonin
norepinephrine and dopamine and that
just a slight imbalance and just one of
those can lead somebody to feel sad or
anxious and then it’s not their fault
that they feel that way once you start
taking the stigma off a feeling anxious
oppressed you empower students to come
forward and say I mean how and once you
do that it can stop living with the
condition that they don’t need to be
living with there’s a lot of things well
using medications and not using
medications we can do to help with that
better yet we can potentially help them
from hurting themselves or potentially
others sometimes the future so back to a
pop quiz what does the life-threatening
effect of taking too much see the
benefit it’s liver failure and we need
to know that it can happen by accident
also because the Sina benefit is in a
variety of over-the-counter and
prescription medications but if you’re
not careful over time you could be
taking too much and lead to some severe
side effects we should know that the
drug naproxen is a non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drug also known as an
NSAID and then you cannot take it at the
same time side of broken because it does
not do anything for your pain control
but greatly increases the risk for
serious side effects namely bleeding
into your stomach should you take out
your open at the same time of course not
because we just talked about that what
is it potentially life-saving medication
that would give to someone experiencing
anaphylaxis
it’s epinephrine students should know
how to give it teachers should know how
to give it and it should be stopped in
classrooms and common public areas and
what is the medication that can help
reverse an opioid overdose it’s naloxone
also known as narcan and we should need
to know that we can buy this from over
2,000 community pharmacies that
participate in the program through a
standing order with
prescription so if you know somebody or
utor suffer a user to have this on your
person can help save the life so
hopefully my talk today is that I’m
thinking about your own knowledge about
these medication and illicit substances
and this helps highlight how important
it is to start our me our middle school
and high school students with this
knowledge it’s not enough anymore to say
to not do something we need to give them
the why and if somebody still doesn’t
understand how important is just this
one time I give you permission to say because I says
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