Rates of Fatal Teen Overdoses Doubled in 2020

The overdose death rate among U.S. adolescents nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 — an alarming climb that continued into 2021, a recent study showed. A main factor is that the supply of increasingly deadly drugs, which has driven overall overdose deaths to more than 100,000 per year, has trickled into what adolescents are using. What teens may think is an opioid painkiller or Xanax diverted from the legal supply is now more likely to be a counterfeit tablet containing fentanyl or similar synthetic opioids. The study also shows the rates of overdose mortality from illicit fentanyl and related synthetic opioids took off in the past few years, quadrupling from 2018 to 2021.