Last year, more than half of Colorado’s overdose deaths were a result of fentanyl. Now, state colleges are working to inform students of the dangers of the opioid that’s increasingly infiltrating street drugs.

Ten colleges and universities launched the “You Can’t Outsmart Fentanyl” education campaign this week, created by the nonprofit Blue Rising Community. The campaign will use a website, campus signage, social media posts and giveaways to inform students about the prevalence and deadliness of fentanyl, and how to recognize and respond to an overdose.

The campaign targets college students who may be experimenting with drugs, potentially unknowingly ingesting fentanyl laced in recreational drugs, such as cocaine.

“The complexities of the time we live in require schools to play a different role in how we support students,” said Janet Chase, director of student life at Aims Community College, which is participating in the campaign. “We have to attack issues like fentanyl poisonings from multiple angles to make sure that students know about the issue and understand how it relates to them.”

In collaboration with families who lost college-aged children to fentanyl, Blue Rising Community created a checklist for colleges and universities to reduce fentanyl overdoses on campuses. The checklist includes informing students about fentanyl risks via the campaign, alerting students of nearby clusters of overdoses, and providing students with training and access to naloxone to reverse overdoses.

The following 10 schools are participating in the checklist: Aims Community College, Colorado Mesa University, Colorado School of Mines, Front Range Community College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Otero College, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Northern Colorado and Western Colorado University.

Blue Rising Community is also offering overdose response training to campus staff and students and encouraging campus security and local law enforcement to contribute to a mapping system to collect drug overdose data.

“It’s time for us to have an honest conversation about the increased risk of drug use on college campuses, particularly counterfeit pills and cocaine,” said Dawn Reinfeld, executive director of Blue Rising Community. “It is our hope that more schools will be proactive in educating their students about fentanyl and that Colorado will lead the nation on how to save lives on college campuses from fentanyl poisonings.”

Chelsea Brundige, whose son, Miles, died of fentanyl poisoning as a college student in Colorado, added: “We need colleges and universities to do everything they can to get ahead of this crisis. The work that impacted families like mine have done with Blue Rising created a road map to do just that.”

This effort comes as 1,799 people died from an overdose in Colorado last year, 920 of whom overdosed on fentanyl, according to state data. Fatal fentanyl overdoses increased by more than 800% in only four years, up from 102 in 2018.