Teen overdose deaths have spiked despite drug use reaching a new low
"This is really about drug use becoming more dangerous, not more common," one researcher said.Kholood Eid / The New York Times via Redux PicturesDrug overdose deaths among teenagers have risen sharply in the last two years, according to new research.
"Over the past 40 years, adult [overdose] death rates have continued to skyrocket exponentially, and we’ve never seen that for teens," Friedman said."They’ve had very flat, stable overdose death rates, and then all of a sudden that’s changing." Most teen overdose deaths recorded by the CDC were caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
"Teens need to be really concerned about these counterfeit pills, because they look very convincing," said Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Kolodny said more research is needed to better understand which demographic groups are suffering the most fatal overdoses. The JAMA letter found particularly high overdose rates among American Indian, Alaska Native and Latino teens.
Friedman's analysis didn't look at how many overdoses occurred among teens with substance dependence, but some experts think that has most likely played a role in the spike.
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