More teenagers dying from fentanyl. ‘It has a hold on me, and I don’t know why’
New research from the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests teens are having their lives ruined by the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.
It’s a deadly substance that is increasingly being prescribed in high doses to people in pain. While fentanyl is primarily a painkiller, the drug has been linked to hundreds of opioid overdoses and deaths in the U.S. and around the world.
Dr. Mark Schoenebeck, the study’s lead author, said in an interview with Business Insider that the U.S. opioid crisis is only growing worse.
“The vast majority of the drug overdose deaths are now opioid overdoses. The number of opioid overdose deaths has grown from under 17,000 a year in 1999 to more than 77,000 in 2015. And fentanyl is one of the top three in terms of overdose deaths,” Schoenebeck said.
“It has a hold on me, and I don’t know why.”
Schoenebeck said he and his colleagues looked at data obtained from Medicare from 2009 to 2015, and they identified what they described as a “fentanyl epidemic” throughout the study period.
It’s not just the amount of drugs being prescribed. It’s the type of drugs being prescribed. It’s how the drugs are being prescribed. It’s the way drugs are being packaged.
Schoenebeck said it’s clear doctors are prescribing higher doses of opioid drugs to treat pain than previous years.
“Some pain management drugs are now being used at 50 times the amount recommended. In 2015, a prescription for a patient who was taking hydrocodone and oxycodone and acetaminophen for a common pain condition called back pain could be filled in one day for a large dose of fentanyl,” he said.
Now, with the drug’s increasingly widespread use, law enforcement and medical professionals are finding it’s extremely difficult to trace the source of these overdoses.
“From 2009 to 2015, an average of 5,800 patients per year were
