A display representing a medicine cabinet informs visitors to a memorial by the National Safety Council with data about opioids, Monday, Jan. 29, 2018, in Pittsburgh. The exhibit also features a wall with 22,000 carved medicine pills, each representing the face of someone who fatally overdosed.
Keith Srakocic / The Associated Press
Keith Srakocic / The Associated Press
A display representing a medicine cabinet informs visitors to a memorial by the National Safety Council with data about opioids, Monday, Jan. 29, 2018, in Pittsburgh. The exhibit also features a wall with 22,000 carved medicine pills, each representing the face of someone who fatally overdosed.
For the first time in a decade, overdose deaths among teens in the United States rose dramatically in 2020 and kept rising through 2021 as well. That’s according to the results of a new study published Tuesday in JAMA.
“This is very alarming because what we’ve seen in other parts of the population is that when overdose death rates start to rise, they tend to continue to do so for quite some time,” says Joe Friedman, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the new study.
“We’re still really in the early days in terms of teen overdose. And that makes this an especially important time to intervene,” he adds.
Friedman and his colleagues found that fatal overdoses among adolescents nearly doubled from 492 in 2019 to 954 in 2020, an increase of 94%. There was an additional 20% rise in 2021 compared to the previous year. The highest rates were among Native American and Alaskan Native teens, followed by Latino teens.
“For decades, we’ve seen overdose rates rising among adults, and teens have been insulated from that,” says Friedman. “And now, for the first time, the overdose crisis is reaching teens as well.”
For the first time in a decade, overdose deaths among teens in the United States rose dramatically in 2020 and kept rising through 2021 as well. That’s according to the results of a new study published Tuesday in JAMA.
“This is very alarming because what we’ve seen in other parts of the population is that when overdose death rates start to rise, they tend to continue to do so for quite some time,” says Joe Friedman, a public health researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the new study.
“We’re still really in the early days in terms of teen overdose. And that makes this an especially important time to intervene,” he adds.
Friedman and his colleagues found that fatal overdoses among adolescents nearly doubled from 492 in 2019 to 954 in 2020, an increase of 94%. There was an additional 20% rise in 2021 compared to the previous year. The highest rates were among Native American and Alaskan Native teens, followed by Latino teens.
“For decades, we’ve seen overdose rates rising among adults, and teens have been insulated from that,” says Friedman. “And now, for the first time, the overdose crisis is reaching teens as well.”
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
