Her son died of an overdose in his UCLA dorm room. Where was the Narcan?

In the summer of 2020, Monica Vera-Schubert talked to NPR about her long struggle to get insurance coverage for her son Bobby’s addiction treatment. They’d recently prevailed, he was getting sober, and Vera-Schubert, a single mom, expressed immense gratitude. “My son is alive; I appreciate every moment I have with him,” she said.

In the years that followed, Bobby became a devoted student, got into his dream school of UCLA, and sometimes joined his pharmacist mom as an activist, giving talks and warning others of the dangers of prescription-drug abuse. “I always tell him, ‘Bobby, I'm so proud of you,’” Vera-Schubert said at the time. Bobby would respond, “Mom, I’m so proud of you .

” That was four years ago. This spring, Vera-Schubert reached out again, saying Bobby had relapsed. On April 12, a roommate found him slumped over his desk in his dorm, apparently overdosed from fake Xanax pills laced with fentanyl.

Bobby Schubert was 29. The Schuberts’ tragedy speaks to the need for greater public health response to overdoses , including on college campuses. The overdose death rate among young adults ages 18 to 24 spiked 34% in just five years between 2018 and 2022, according to data provided to NPR from the CDC.

The trend largely is driven by cheap and potent opioids like fentanyl infiltrating a variety of street drugs and fake pills resembling treatments for anxiety, or ADHD. In short, casual or even inadvertent drug use is now far riskier, killing a broade.