Teen drug deaths growing 2x faster than all, faster in all racial demos, & don't show the same racial disparities.

A key driver: Misperception of harm due to a knowledge gap about fentanyl & fake pills.

3 action to help close the knowledge gap: Federal, State, Family.

Short🧵 1) Contact your U.S. Reps. & Sens., ask for support of the FACTS Act: Fentanyl Awareness for Children & Teens in Schools. Knowledge is a protective factor! (2/6)
@RepBonamici @KevinKileyCA @JohnCornyn @SenatorHassan @RepJoeNeguse @RepLCD

. bonamici.house.gov/media/press-re…

U.S. Mortality perspective: injury type as a percent of deaths for that age. The big gray field is non-injuries like cancer & heart disease. Colors are theoretically more preventable injuries...Red/orange=drugs. Blues=guns & suicide. Greens=car accidents & other injuries. (1/3) Same U.S. mortality data: injury type as a percent of deaths for age group. It is astounding & tragic that 45% of deaths of 10-19 year olds and 53% of 20-29 year olds' deaths are from drugs, guns, & suicide. These, fentanyl especially, driving U.S. life expectancy down. (2/3)

Today's public health crisis: For those under 50, fentanyl-involved deaths exceed every cause by a large margin. Poisonings, driven by fentanyl, have grown from 1 of 17 deaths 20 yrs ago...to 1 of every 5 today.

And growing 5x faster than anything else. Sadly, we've more than replaced years' gains in cancer, heart disease, perinatal conditions, HIV, & car accidents with losses mainly from drugs...plus firearm-involved homicides & suicides, and chronic liver disease.

Are we meeting today's threats as we did previous ones?

U.S. injury deaths more than doubled over 20 years, 5x faster than population growth and 3x faster than illness & disease deaths, despite COVID. The vast majority of this was driven by drug-induced deaths, most recently driven by fentanyl, of our working age population. Drug deaths have exceeded other injury causes for a decade and are growing far faster; now they are multiple times higher than any other cause, whether you slice that by 'mechanism' (ie: guns, cars) or intention (ie: homicide, suicide, accident).

Teen drug deaths have skyrocketed in 2020. 5X growth in 20 yrs, but about doubled in 2020 (+86%). 75% of these deaths involve fentanyl, +154% vs. prior year. Fake pills played a big part in this, and most kids still don't know. More on that & some state details follow. (1) Deaths up, drug use down. What's happening? Teens deceived by fake medicine. Ex: Teens are ~4x less likely to use Heroin than Vicodin because they perceive Vicodin to be ~4x as safe. Most are not seeking fentanyl, which is 50x heroin, 100x morphine. drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/tr… (2

This CDC report explicitly calls out fake pills impact on youth & need for education. Highlights heavy impact in the west. cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7… While this is way late to the thousands of families who've lost a child to a fake pill, it is at least using earlier surveillance data and being explicit about this danger. Warn the kids @SongforCharlie!

3 points discussed recently shown in data:
1)Youth are more affected by illicit fentanyl, often sold to them in fake pills disguised as legit Rx.
2)Rx Opioids have very little to do with the current crisis.
3)Multiple substance use is the rule/fentanyl is increasingly in all (1) My understanding of how these data fit together: If an expert/professional out there educates me where I'm wrong, that would be welcome. The almost final 2020 CDC provisional data at detail is available now. 2020 had 92K unique deaths, 57K of which 'involved' fentanyl. (2)

Youth deaths from drugs in Oregon about doubled in 2020, growing faster than any other age group in the state, 3x the state growth rate. That's because of illicit fentanyl, often packaged in fake pills. Find resources to educate our kids @SongforCharlie. #onepillcankill (thread) 48 out of 76 OR youth deaths in 2020 involved fentanyl. Fentanyl is involved in youth drug death more than twice as much as it is for all ages in OR. That's caused in part by fake pills, sold as legit medicine, often over social media. Youth are largely unaware of this risk.

Expected but still shocking, and tragic. Youth are disproportionately affected by the wave of illicit fentanyl, sold to them as counterfeit pills often over social media. While the near 100K deaths grew ~30% for all ages, deaths of kids ages 10-19 grew +86% in 2020. RT please!(1)

https://twitter.com/jeppdx/status/1448322568570556418

>7k youth ages 10-24 died from drugs in 2020, a +50% increase v 2019.(17K under 30). Deaths for these 3 5-year age groups grew the fastest out of all ages.This was driven by illicit fentanyl, often sold in counterfeit pills over social media, disguised as legit Rx. Teens +86%!(2)

Zach matters.For all the reasons an 18 year old should matter to all of us. A beautiful soul taken too soon, like many recently lost to illicit fentanyl packaged in a fake pill that could take any kid. And he matters like all those lost to the horrific toll of drug poisoning. (1)

https://twitter.com/songforcharlie/status/1449005890972102662

See, Zach didn’t know the Perc he bought on line wasn’t safe.’Should’ our kids take pills not prescribed to them? Nope. But many ‘do’, believing this is low risk when in fact it’s more dangerous than anything.Fact: Youth experiment.(2) oregonlive.com/health/2021/05…

>12,000 Americans under 30 died of drug overdoses & poisonings in 2019; ~8k involved fentanyl. We don’t know how many <30 died in 2020 with drug death +30% & fentanyl +54% but I have an example in CA. Note that US COVID deaths for these ages is ~3500 @SongforCharlie (1)

https://twitter.com/nabp/status/1430962016752185350

We don’t know how many youngers were impacted in 2020 cuz the data are still provisional and don’t have age group. But it’s likely that if we just grew youth(ages 15-24)death by the total rates, it will be ugly. Historically youth track lower than total pop in drug deaths. (2)

Today I celebrate the life of my forever 18 year old son. He passed in December 2020, but due to COVID, we could not gather until now. Today will be a day of celebration and I plan to put my drug awareness advocacy aside for today after sharing this message. (1) Drugs have taken a horrible human toll on our society through all the years of Cal’s life. Close to 1,000,000 Americans have died from drug induced causes in the last 20 years. All the gains we made from auto safety and others have been wiped out by drugs (2)