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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The lack of interest in what impacts teens is a mark of who is exerting the most social pressure on society. If COVID hysteria can be thought of as a mortality crisis of age 70, then the total silence on what affects the under 30 crowd is also about the indifference of the same group.
Teenagers are the germ spreading problems of the children of the ruling class/social majority of current society. When teenagers were the problem of the same generation, drugs were a BIG DEAL. I can remember it as PSAs, in school, etc. It’s very embarrassing and distressing to have your particular kid die of despair/hedonism. Thus somebody needed to do something about it. If your grandkid died of that, it’s sad, but not obviously it was poor parenting on the part of your kid.
Like the meme says of Boomers, “If I was facing an enemy and a traitor but I only had one bullet, I’d turn and shoot my grandson.”
American take the most amount of drugs in the world both legal and illegal. Yes the illegal drugs are a problem and causing many issues but few talk about the amount of legal drugs that Americans take or force on their kids. The number of prescribed antidepressants given to children from 5 years to 12 years have increase 41% from the years 2015 to 2021. https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/number-of-young-children-prescribed-antidepressants-has-risen-by-41-since-2015
Remember most kids learn to take drugs to solve their problems (either by taking legal drugs at early age or by watching a parent use drugs or alcohol to solve their issues)
Now lets talk about women taking the pill. Now there is not a lot of information as I remember there used to be but surprisingly the 2 biggest demographic that take the Pill are 20 to 29 years old women (about 22%) and 15 to 19 (about 18%).
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-portion-of-women-use-birth-control/
I would guess mostly the highly educated women are taking these. It affects a lot of things. The drugs most use synthetic estrogen and progestin which enter the brain and act as endocrine disruptors, interfering with the signaling process that is necessary for ovulation. Now many women have reported health problems with taking the pill for an extended time. Depression and Mood swings have been known to be a major side affect. This would have major damaging affect on the relationships around these women. Imagine the mother child relationship or the father wife relationship?
The next one I would focus on that doesn’t get enough attention is the mate selection. It is reported as the following “There is emerging evidence that the use of the pill by women can disrupt: (i) the variation in mate preferences across their menstrual cycle; (ii) their attractiveness to men; and (iii) their ability to compete with normally cycling women for access to mates.” This could mean that a woman on the Pill might be selecting a different man (or possibly a woman instead) that she would not of selected if she did not take the Pill
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169534709002638#:~:text=There%20is%20emerging%20evidence%20that,women%20for%20access%20to%20mates.
All this might be some of the reasons for the teen overdose. Add other societal factors things like Single mom homes, education and no hope for a better future.
Any one thoughts?
Horrible.
This comes on the heels of news of record rates of suicide and self-harm among young people in the UK: https://youtu.be/UO_d9rAFpx0?si=qTTGuxPqZwlL2lw2
Oh, God, when will you destroy the wicked?
– Psalm 139
I can’t help but think the Boomer’s silence on the ongoing Drug Epidemic overlaps with the moment they became dependent on Social Security and Medication, things that the responsible parties (Government and Pharmaceutical Companies) provide.