Children under the age of 14 are dying of fentanyl poisoning at a faster rate than any other age group, according to a new analysis by Families Against Fentanyl (FAF), a nonprofit organization that raises awareness about the deadly opioid.
Fentanyl poisoning occurs when people come into contact with or accidentally ingest the synthetic opioid, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and their bodies shut down as a result, a trend that has been on the rise in the United States. in recent years. years, according to FAF founder Jim Rauh.
“It’s so prevalent in society now,” said Rauh, a chemical engineer by trade who lost his 37-year-old son Tom to fentanyl poisoning in 2015. “The distribution goes to dispersal by entropy. That’s the law of physics. And it’s showing because of the massive amount of this material… It’s so prevalent that just our innocent children, by incidental contact, are being killed. And now it’s infiltrating schools and other closed environments.”
Between 2019 and 2021, the latest year for which opioid death data is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), synthetic opioid deaths led by fentanyl poisonings among US children under 14 years of age they increased faster than among any other US age group, according to an FAF analysis of the CDC data.
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Fentanyl poisoning occurs when people come into contact with or accidentally ingest the synthetic opioid, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and their bodies shut down as a result.
(New York City Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor)
In other words, the number of children under the age of 14 dying from fentanyl poisoning is increasing at a faster rate than other age demographics based on data from 2019 to 2021, suggesting that children are being exposed more frequently and ingest the deadly opioid by accident. .
Infant deaths from fentanyl increased twice as fast between 2019 and 2021. While fentanyl deaths in the United States doubled between 2019 and 2021, deaths among infants under 1 year of age more than quadrupled.
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Fentanyl deaths among young children ages 1 to 4 more than tripled, and deaths among children ages 5 to 14 nearly quadrupled, according to FAF.
Between 2019 and 2021, synthetic opioid deaths from fentanyl poisoning among US children under the age of 14 increased faster than among any other US age group.
(Families Against Fentanyl)
Since 2015, fentanyl deaths have increased nearly 10-fold among infants and 15-fold, an increase of more than 1,400%, among children ages 1-14.
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Fentanyl is deadly in small doses and is most often found in recreational drugs, although some illicit drug manufacturers and cartels have compressed fentanyl pills made to look like prescription painkillers.
Since 2015, deaths from fentanyl have increased nearly 10-fold among infants and 15-fold (an increase of more than 1,400%) among children ages 1-14.
(Families Against Fentanyl)
The synthetic opioid can also become a danger to children when it is left in homes or in public places where they can reach it and ingest it.
In one of many recent examples, a 13-year-old boy from Connecticut died at the Academy of Sports and Medical Sciences in Hartford after being exposed to fentanyl. Drug-sniffing dogs reportedly found 40 bags of the opioid inside the school after the boy ingested it, Fox 61 Hartford reported at the time.
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FAF noted in a press release that while suicides used to account for more than 25% of fentanyl deaths, they now account for less than 1% of fentanyl deaths.
A reporter displays an example of the amount of fentanyl that can be deadly after a news conference on deaths from fentanyl exposure, at DEA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia on June 6, 2017.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
On Monday, an Ohio court heard evidence in Rauh’s 2020 lawsuit filed in Summit County accusing Zheng, a Chinese drug manufacturer and distributor, of sending his son drugs containing fentanyl that his family believes eventually got him. killed. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced charges against Gordon Jin, 35, and his father, Guanghua Zheng, 62, for company crimes in 2018.
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“They traced the shipment directly from the Zheng drug trafficking organization in China to Tom and another victim here in Akron. [Ohio]. And they were able to track that all along, accuse the Zhengs, and Jeff Sessions was reading this accusation on TV in 2018, and I almost fainted,” Rauh recalled.
Families Against Fentanyl founder Jim Rauh, who lost his son to fentanyl poisoning, is pushing to designate the illicit drug a weapon of mass destruction.
(Families Against Fentanyl)
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Since then, the FAF founder has been pushing Congress to designate fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, as it has received support from various attorneys general and legislators across the country.
Rauh also suggests that parents and schools know how to use Narcan, a medication used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, in case of an unexpected emergency.
