Drug overdose deaths among adolescents on the rise

HOUSTON – The variety of teenagers and adolescents dying from drug overdoses has elevated dramatically over the previous two years.

Ranee Crest’s daughter Lydia was an unlucky sufferer. 

“She was lovely, vibrant, passionate, unimaginable,” Crest mentioned. 

Crest mentioned her daughter turned up lifeless in her bed room in July 2020. The reason for dying was an unintentional overdose. 

Crest mentioned her daughter struggled with habit however had been sober and in restoration for over a 12 months.

“We have been within the pandemic, and isolation, I feel, had an enormous issue,” she mentioned. 

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Lydia strolling by way of a discipline.
(Ranee Crest)

In line with a examine revealed by the Journal of the American Medical Affiliation, lethal overdoses amongst adolescents practically doubled from 492 in 2019 to 954 in 2020. They jumped one other 20% in 2021.

George Youngblood, who has labored with Teen and Household Providers in Houston, mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic affected tons of of youngsters throughout the nation in the identical means that it did Lydia. 

“The extra we remoted our children with out with the ability to do all of the social-emotional studying that they wanted to do, I feel that the psychological well being disaster turned so acute. They skilled nervousness and melancholy,” Youngblood mentioned. 

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The variety of teenagers and adolescents dying from drug overdoses has elevated dramatically over the previous two years.
(Fox Information)

Youngblood mentioned the variety of kids in Teen and Household Providers’ outreach program alone doubled after the pandemic began. 

“For the autumn semester, simply in considered one of our college districts, we noticed nearly 600 youngsters in disaster, which was a rise from pre-pandemic numbers in that faculty of 350,” Youngblood mentioned.

Teen and Household Providers in Houston hosts a weekend getaway.
(George Youngblood)

The Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse has discovered that medicine have gotten deadlier. 

“There was an enormous rise in illicitly manufactured prescription capsules that include fentanyl, at the least 30% of which have doses that may kill somebody,” the institute’s director, Dr. Nora D. Volkow, mentioned. “We imagine this can be one of many elements that’s placing youngsters at a better danger for overdose mortality.”  

This has left moms like Crest with one query: “So, what are we doing now?”

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Final 12 months, the El Paso sector of Customs and Border Safety alone seized greater than six instances the quantity of fentanyl it did in 2018.

Final week, President Biden launched the primary Nationwide Drug Management Technique targeted on untreated habit and drug trafficking. Federal officers mentioned about two-thirds of drug overdoses during the last 12 months have been associated to fentanyl.