"What Is Happening To Our Young
People?" Teenage Drug Deaths Surge 20%
by Tyler Durden
Aug 19, 2017 5:50 PM
There has been no shortage of
depressing headlines tied to America's opioid epidemic, and to that list we can
add one more: A new study has found that the number of teens who died from
overdoses
climbed
by nearly 20% in 2015 after declining for seven straight years,
according to the Guardian.
But while men represent two-thirds of all drug-related deaths, the recent climb
in teenage fatalities has been disproportionately driven by women, as the Guardian
explains.
“The
jump in fatalities was driven by heroin and synthetic opioid use and by an
increasing number of deaths among teenage girls. Deaths among teenagers
represent a tiny portion of drug overdose deaths nationally – less than 2%.”
Last week, President Donald Trump
informally declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, and pledged to
formulate a plan of action to curb the rising death toll. Presumably, the
administration will follow some, if not all, of the recommendations made by a
Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Led by New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie, the commission offered a few strategies for combating the
epidemic in a preliminary report released earlier this summer. The recommendations include granting
Medicaid waivers to all 50 states, allowing them to quickly eliminate barriers
to drug treatment, and funding a federal incentives program to increase access
to medication-assisted treatment programs.
The study's authors said they wanted to
document the falling death rate among teenagers. However, it appears the data
had other plans.
“We wanted to document that in this age
group there had been a decline [in deaths],” said Sally Curtin, lead author of
the study. “The trends were unique for
this age group. But, once again, it did increase again between 2014 and 2015.”
The rate of teenage drug-related deaths
declined by 27% between 2007 and 2014 even as the rate for all Americans
skyrocketed. But most of that decline was reversed by the jump in fatalities
that occurred during 2015. Like the
broader crisis, the surge in teenage deaths has been driven by powerful
synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil which can be as much as 100
times more powerful than morphine.
The report looked at the rate of
overdose deaths for teens aged 15-19 between 1999 and 2015. Researchers found the rate of teens who
died from a drug overdose dropped 26% between 2007 and 2014. Among boys, the
death rate fell by one-third. But in 2015, the rate of overdoses among American
teens increased by almost one-fifth. That year, 772 teens died of drug
overdoses. The number of deaths in 2014 was 658, according to the Guardian.
You
will find more statistics at Statista
While the rate of teen boys overdosing
dropped dramatically in the last decade, the rate of overdoses among girls held
steady and then increased in the last two years. As one might expect, the fall in rates of drug-related deaths mirrored
a decline in rates of drug use among teens – a trend that has persisted for
nearly two decades.
“Indeed, fewer teens reported even
trying drugs. A 40-year-running,
nationally representative survey called Monitoring the Future recently recorded
the lowest rates of drug, alcohol and tobacco use among middle and high school
students since the 1990s.
The
trend prompted researchers to question whether smartphones might be replacing
the inclination of previous generations of teens to abuse drugs.”
The jump in fatalities was driven by
heroin and synthetic opioid use and by an increasing number of deaths among
teenage girls, who were twice as likely to die from intentional overdoses than
their male peers.
“Traci Green, a professor at Brown
University School of Medicine who studied the drug use habits of college-aged
Rhode Islanders, said that the study reflects “a very messy use environment” in which heroin may be tainted with the
synthetic opioid fentanyl, fentanyl may be pressed into illegal pills, and
users may mix drugs such as opioids and benzodiazepines (typically used to
treat anxiety).
“It is of course very upsetting and
worth thinking about what is
happening with our young people – your young men and your young women,”
Green said. Deaths among “young women,
we have known for a long time, happen for different reasons and present
differently”.
Though the data examined in the study
predates their deaths, two 13-year-old boys in the Utah ski-resort town of Park
City died late last year after ingesting a synthetic opioid called U-47700,
better known as “pinky.” It’s believed the boys obtained the drug legally by
ordering it from a Chinese lab over the internet.
Their deaths made national news, and
drew attention to what’s probably the most significant cause of the spike in
teenage deaths: The fact that, thanks to
the dark web, it’s now easier than ever for teens to order deadly drugs over
the internet and have them shipped straight to their home.
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