“Fentanyl Tainted Pills Bought on Social Media Cause Youth Drug Deaths to Soar”

Most people are aware of the staggering numbers of fatal drug poisonings in the United States—108,000 last year.

Less well-known is the particularly rapid increase in fatal drug overdoses among teens and young adults.

In this week’s New York Times:

“Overdoses are now the leading cause of preventable death among people ages 18 to 45, ahead of suicide, traffic accidents and gun violence, according to federal data.

Although experimental drug use by teenagers in the United States has been dropping since 2010, their deaths from fentanyl have skyrocketed, to 884 in 2021, from 253 in 2019, according to a recent study in the journal JAMA.”

Kids are using social media platforms to connect with drug dealers, and arrange a purchase and delivery.

“There are drug sellers on every major social media platform — that includes Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok and emerging platforms like Discord and Telegram,” said Tim Mackey, a professor at the University of California San Diego who runs a federally funded start-up that developed artificial intelligence software to detect illicit online drug sales. “It’s an entire ecosystem problem: As long as your child is on one of those platforms, they’re going to have the potential to be exposed to drug sellers.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/health/pills-fentanyl-social-media.html

(Jan Hoffman, 19 May 2022, NY Times)