Drug overdoses among young Americans translate into over one million years of lost life, study finds

Young people from ages of 10 to 24 years old may have lost greater than 1 million years of life from 2015 to 2019, according to a recent JAMA Pediatrics article.

Although similar studies have been done on adults, the article notes it’s the first known study to assess lives lost due to unintentional drug overdoses specifically aimed among young people.

“A lot of our public health interventions are geared towards adults. And we know that the types of messaging and, really, the points of contact for adolescents and young people are different from adults,” said co-author Dr. Orman T. Hall, an addiction specialist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines unintentional drug overdose ” … when no harm is intended. Unintentional drug poisoning includes drug overdoses resulting from drug misuse, drug abuse, and taking too much of a drug for medical reasons.”

Approximately 22,000 young people between ages 10-24 died of unintentional drug overdose in the United States between January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2019, according to the study, which obtained death records from the CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research mortality file.- READ MORE