‘They died because they tried it once’: a US high school was ravaged by fentanyl - and came back from the brink

At Dana Hills high school in Dana Point, California, there have been five drug overdoses in four years. Photograph: September Dawn Bottoms/The Guardian

From his small, windowless office across from the teachers’ lounge at Dana Hills high school in Orange county, California, Mike Darnold has witnessed first-hand the rise of fentanyl as a brutal teen killer.

Darnold, 80, is a former police officer and recovering alcoholic. He’s spent the last 16 years helping save students whose lives have veered out of control because of drugs and alcohol. But it wasn’t until recently that his job became such an immediate life-and-death battle.