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Opioid Addiction

Adolescents and young adults lost more than 1.25M years of life to drug overdose deaths in a 4-year period, study finds

When someone young dies from a drug overdose, families not only mourn the loss of their loved one, but also the decades of life that go un-lived.

A recent study suggests families and friends may be mourning more than a million years of young life lost to overdose deaths in the last several years. 

Researchers at The Ohio State University found adolescents and teenagers, ages 10 to 19, cumulatively lost nearly 200,000 years of life due to unintentional drug overdoses from 2015 to 2019, according to the report published in JAMA Pediatrics. When they expanded the study to 10- to 24-year-olds, it grew to more than 1.25 million years lost.

“Counting the number of adolescent deaths doesn’t accurately reflect what we lost when we lose someone so young,” said lead author Dr. O. Trent Hall, an addiction medicine physician at The Ohio State University. “Each one of these years is a year that people didn’t have with their loved one, and it’s important to think of that when we’re prioritizing our public health.”

The study looked at the overdose deaths of more than 21,500 young people between ages 10 and 24 during the 4-year period. Years of life lost is the difference between the age at which a person dies and their expected remaining lifespan. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported U.S. life expectancy was 78.8 years in 2019. 

The COVID-19 pandemic – and the rise of fentanyl – may have worsened the crisis for younger people, health experts say. 

“The pandemic was a big catalyst for social isolation, and addiction and mental illness is an isolating disease,” said Dr. Edwin Kim, medical director of the Charles O’Brien Center for Addiction Treatment at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. “A lot of younger folks, especially, don’t know how to ask for help.”

Opioids are the main driver of drug overdose deaths, health experts say, and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that’s up to 100 times stronger than morphine is playing a leading role. It was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been sold illicitly and mixed with other street drugs.

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Provisional CDC data shows teen deaths caused by fentanyl have tripled in just two years, according to an analysis by Families Against Fentanyl, a non-profit raising awareness of the fentanyl crisis and advocating for solutions. 

The group reported 374 deaths caused by fentanyl among teens ages 13 to 19 in the year ending in May 2019. That number grew to 1,365 deaths in the 12 months ending in May 2021. 

“It’s causing a tremendous amount of social unrest and heartbreak," said FAF founder Jim Rauh, whose son died of fentanyl poisoning in 2015.

Drug dealers mix fentanyl with other drugs including heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine, Kim said, so teens and young adults may not know they’re using it. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 42% of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 mg of the drug, which is considered “a potentially lethal dose.”

“These are not your grandfather’s drugs from the 60’s and not your parents’ drugs from the 80’s,” he said. “It’s a whole other ball game.”

Even though adolescents and young people are dying in increasing numbers from drug overdoses, Hall said, adults have been the primary focus of most research reports and public health interventions. And health experts say existing interventions aimed at adults may not work in younger populations.

Study authors argue more research is needed to determine how to best engage younger people with education, prevention, harm reduction and substance treatment, as well as community and family support.

“We need to do more to screen young people for substance use and be able to offer them evidence-based treatment,” Hall said. “Addiction is a disease that often begins in adolescence, and it’s a critical time to intervene."

Contributing: Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY. Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT. 

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

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