The mental, physical, and spiritual health crises facing American young adults and adolescents took a massive turn for the worse in 2022.
According to the New England Journal of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of teen drug overdoses doubled compared to 2018.
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Boston researchers found that an average of 22 adolescents ages 14 to 18 years old died each week in the U.S. from drug overdoses in 2022.The death rate for drug overdoses among teens is more than double what it was in 2018, according to the study, which is entitled “The Overdose Crisis Among U.S. Adolescents.”
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A total of 1,125 teens died of drug overdose or poisoning in 2022, making it the third-leading cause of death for teenagers across the country – behind firearm-related injuries and motor vehicle crashes, respectively, the report said.
“Fewer teens than ever are actively using drugs, and yet more teens than ever are dying,” senior author Dr. Scott Hadland, chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and Harvard Medical School, told Fox News.
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Researchers indicated two main factors that have contributed to the record teen drug overdose rates: the widespread – and sometimes unwitting – use of fentanyl, which accounts for 75 percent of teen overdoses, and mental health effects of the COVID lockdowns.
As other studies have found, those poisonings primarily occur when teens inadvertently take counterfeit pills laced with a lethal dose of the synthetic opioid.
“It’s really clear that the problems started to take off a little bit before COVID and then really accelerated during the COVID pandemic,” Hadland told Fox.
“Teens were isolated and they weren’t able to go to school or engage in the usual activities — and we know that health care systems became more difficult to access.”
Now, there’s no sign of this trend reversing or slowing.
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Yet some hints of good news did turn up amid the unfolding tragedy, with overall teen drug abuse rates going down.
In 2002, 21% of high-school seniors said they had used an illicit drug besides cannabis in the previous year.
By 2022, that share had fallen to 8%.
Yet the declining use of non-cannabis drugs among high school-age Americans hasn’t slowed the teen drug overdose crisis.
Watch video: Teen Overdose Deaths Reach Record High in 2022 Despite Decline in Drug Use
With no end to the teen drug overdose crisis in sight, Americans are left to ponder the cause of the tragedy. Authorities trace many teen drug deaths to counterfeit pills connected with the opioid epidemic. Users believe they are taking relatively milder drugs like oxycodone but instead receive lethal doses of the much more powerful fentanyl.
Both drugs remain effectively legal in the United States, with the government doing little to curtail domestic manufacturers or foreign importers and smugglers.
Absent a government concerned for its citizens’ wellbeing, American teens and young adults remain at grave risk.
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