Candy-colored fentanyl pills seized by authorities in September 2022.(Pasadena Police Department)
By Vanessa Arredondo, Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2023
Fentanyl-related deaths among children increased more than 30-fold between 2013 and 2021, illustrating the opioid crisis’ unrelenting impact across the United States, according to a study by the Yale School of Medicine.
Between 1999 and 2021, 37.5% of all fatal pediatric opioid poisonings were caused by fentanyl, according to the study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The drug is now the primary agent noted in the pediatric opioid crisis, said Julie Gaither, the study’s author and an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Yale.
The study tracked data for more than two decades of opioid deaths among people under 20 and found that 5,194 children and teens have died from fentanyl.
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