The U.S. saw a significant rise in adolescent drug overdose deaths in 2022, primarily due to fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills, despite a decline in overall teen drug use. Research suggests focused educational efforts, policy intervention in high-risk areas, and increased access to naloxone in schools as critical measures to combat this escalating crisis.
“Teenagers are likely to be unaware of just how high-risk experimenting with pills has become, given the recent rise in counterfeit tablets,” said study co-author Joseph Friedman, a researcher at. “It’s often impossible to tell the difference with the naked eye between a real prescription medication obtained from a doctor and a counterfeit version with a potentially deadly dose of fentanyl.
In addition, American Indian and Alaska Native adolescents had 1.82 times the overdose rates of whites between 2020 and 2022. And adolescents are overall likelier to use the pill form of the drug rather than powder, which was previously the main fentanyl source. For instance, while 0.3% of high school seniors in 2022 reported using heroin, which comes in powder form, 5% reported nonmedical use of prescription pills the same year.
Clinicians, educators, and parents can highlight the Safety First curriculum that emphasizes abstinence from drugs and provides information about risk reduction for those who do experiment with drugs, such as where to find and how to use the overdose-reversal agent naloxone