While less than 1% of college students have reported using opioids, the American College Health Association says the overdose risk on college campuses is growing.

That's why the University of Kentucky has joined other colleges and universities around the country trying to mitigate the risk by making the overdose reversal drug naloxone more widely available.

No one sets out to overdose, and overdoses, for the most part, are unintentional.

There were, you know, several young people who died last year from overdose, from fentanyl that were students at Ohio State University.

And that really prompted us to think about this and look at this and think, how can we make sure that we have this this opioid rescue response kit available, you know, on campus in areas where students congregate, where there might be an overdose.

A lot of these overdoses are people that may be taking a pill that they they think is one thing, but they might be counterfeit and laced with something else, such as fentanyl.

Fentanyl is causing most of the overdose deaths now.

It's extremely important that this group of people that we see are having more instances of these overdoses occurring, have access to a medicine that's safe and could save lives almost instantaneously.

So what these kids are designed to do is to provide the antidote, which is the drug naloxone.

And the luxo is an opioid antagonist that reverses overdose.

When when if you respond in time, we've installed over 50 on campus in the student center.

In some of our you know, in our housing, student housing and in our classroom buildings where students congregate, where students are there.

It's not just for people that we might think would be using because it's think about it.

If someone is experiencing an overdose, they're not going to be able to give themselves a treatment.

It has to be somebody that discovers similar, comes across them within a friend or somebody with them, somebody that can then administer the medication and then save their life.

I mean, the best thing would be that that we didn't have overdoses and we didn't have synthetic fentanyl, you know, in our in our drug supply.

But unfortunately, that that's not where we are right now.

If the college students are educated about this and they believe that this is it is in our best interest to combat this crisis, which is really disproportionately affecting young people, then they're going to be champions for this, going for going forward.

And that's how we we get a movement together.

That's how we change the future.

Once we normalize it like that, it's just second nature to say, well, there's, you know, the smoke alarm and there's a aid.

Where's the opioid emergency kit now?

I hope that we that we have in the future.

Freeman says since the kits have been installed, she's received requests from students and faculty to provide information and training on Narcan and opioid use disorder.