The overdose-reversal drug naloxone, also known by the brand name Narcan. Matt Rourke/Associated Press, file

LEWISTON — State-mandated naloxone training will be offered at Lewiston public schools next week, Lewiston Middle School Principal Amanda Bryant said Tuesday.

“I have sent an informational letter home to parents. A few parents have let me know they do not want their child to participate. We are doing a Google survey this Wednesday with students to get an idea of how many are interested,” Bryant said Tuesday.

Naloxone is a medication that reverses opioid overdoses. Once administered, it quickly blocks the drug’s effects on the brain and lungs to prevent death from an overdose. According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, naloxone is effective on drugs such as morphine, heroin, methadone, codeine and fentanyl.

It has no potential for abuse because it isn’t habit-forming, and it will not affect a person if they do not have any opioids in their system. Naloxone comes in two FDA-approved forms – injectable and nasal spray. Schools will stock the nasal spray.

Auburn Public Schools has yet to announce its plans. Superintendent Susan Dorris said Edward Little High School Principal Scott Annear was in charge of organizing the training.

The law signed into effect by Gov. Mills last summer does not mandate students take part. However, the schools must offer the training.

“I think a really important caveat to this piece of legislation is that it is not a required education for young people, but more so for young people and their parents who want them to have access to this education,” Courtney Gary-Allen, organizing director at Maine Recovery Advocacy Project, said Tuesday. Gary-Allen, who is also an At-Large City Councilor in Augusta, has been involved with introducing the bill.

According to Gary-Allen, the bill came into being through the efforts of young people who had been affected by substance use.

“They came together and said that they had all, individually or collectively, had experiences where they wished they had had education around naloxone,” Gary-Allen recalled. Sen. Matthew Pouliot, R-Kennebec, sponsored the bill after hearing the stories behind the push for the legislation.

Gary-Allen thinks the bill’s unanimous passage “really speaks to the desire for all Mainers to have access to naloxone and have education around how to protect our loved ones, whether or not you’re a Democrat, Republican, young or old.”

“In 2023, there were 739 overdose deaths in the state of Maine. Equipping all young people with the knowledge about how to administer naloxone provides an opportunity for both awareness of overdose in the state, and conversations about why doing drugs isn’t great and what the consequences of that are,” Pouliot said Tuesday.

“We encourage parents to take a good look at it the same way they would look at an EpiPen or an external defibrillator,” Gordon Smith, director of opioid response at the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, said Tuesday. “This is about saving lives.”

In other parts of the state, districts are similarly figuring out plans for naloxone training. Biddeford Assistant Superintendent Christopher Indorf said the middle and high schools are still working on scheduling the training sessions for students.

“The Legislature has passed myriad laws – including this one – with required trainings, or requirements to offer training, so we use the lion’s share of our fall staff professional development time on these state-mandated trainings,” he said.

Brunswick school officials are not yet making plans for training students because the district is still working on training all administrators and office staff, said Assistant Superintendent Shawn Lambert. Nurses in the district have stocked naloxone in all school buildings for the past two years.

“We’re still trying to focus on getting our staff trained before we get our students trained,” Lambert said. “We’re not against training students, but that’s not our first priority.”

Lambert said he thinks it’s important to train students to use naloxone – the need for the medication is “just a fact of life” – and so far staff members have welcomed the training. But he knows that everyone might not feel the same way.

“When we roll this out to everybody, I’m not sure we’ll have 100% happiness with this,” he said. “There are some preconceived ideas or reactionary ideas about the whole concept of Narcan.”