All it takes is one small pill. 

One death every five minutes. More than 150 deaths every day. In the United States, overdoses related to synthetic opioids like Fentanyl have continued to rise over the past ten years, resulting in a fentanyl crisis. 

In Maricopa County, more than three people die from fentanyl overdoses each day – that’s why a group of students and faculty from the Tempe Union High School District are working to spread awareness and help combat the fentanyl crisis. 

This mostly student-led effort is now widely known as the “No Second Chance” campaign. 

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Cloe Bolen, a former McClintock high school student who was involved in launching the campaign, said she didn’t want to tell her peers what they should or shouldn’t do, she just wanted to make sure they were aware of the dangers of fentanyl. 

“We go about our daily lives and people aren’t necessarily thinking ‘Oh my god, people are dying from fentanyl right now,’ but the truth is, people are dying from fentanyl right now,” Bolen said. 

The idea for the No Second Chance campaign came about after a death in the Corona Del Sol High School community brought the dangers of fentanyl right to their doorstep. 

Ron Denne and Eric Lauer from the district’s Social and Emotional Wellness Department came to the Community Relations team after their friend and co-worker lost her son due to a fentanyl overdose. 

Denne said that she came to him and the school board, driven by a profound passion to spread awareness about the dangers of fentanyl. 

The Community Relations team extended the information to the marketing programs at a few Tempe high schools including McClintock. 

What started as a small initiative quickly evolved into something bigger than Denne ever imagined. He said even after three years of working on the project, its success is still surreal for him. 

“The campaign went in totally different ways than we expected, and I’m so glad it did,” Denne said. “Qualitatively, being in our community, I hear it on a regular basis. I’ll be walking around campus and somehow No Second Chance just comes up in conversation.” 

Warren Cole, Project Manager of No Second Chance, said numbers display just how successful the campaign has been. 

“At its peak, 70% of counterfeit pills contained lethal doses of fentanyl,” Cole said. “That trend recently went downard, to about 50%, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) credited part of that, at least in the local area, to the messaging that we put out.” 

Cole said No Second Chance has also conducted several tests to measure its success. At the beginning of the past two school years, members behind the campaign gave students a quiz about their knowledge of fentanyl. 

At the end of the year, students were given the same quiz and administrators noted a significant increase in the knowledge students had, with over 70% of students demonstrating increased knowledge of the dangers of fentanyl. 

Bolen said she thinks the biggest success that has come from the campaign is its ability to directly help people by giving them the facts and resources to understand the dangers of fentanyl. 

“I can list the awards No Second Chance has gotten, but at the end of the day, if you can see and say ‘I did really end up helping someone,’ that’s gonna be a lot more meaningful than anything else,” Bolen said. 

No Second Chance has collaborated with the National Guard, the DEA, the Tempe Coalition, and more organizations. It has also received immense support from the surrounding community in Tempe. 

Cole said if there was one message he truly hoped people would take away from No Second Chance, it’s that there really could be no second chance. 

“It’s the name of the initiative,” Cole said. “There quite literally could be no second chance. One pill could kill.”