Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think
- In the mist of all the news on the opioid epidemic, details of how children are affected can be buried.
- A new report from Yale shows us the scope of the problem, and little we are doing about it.
- While the study is grim, it does show us that progress is possible and offers a few solutions.
The United States is in the middle of one of the worst drug crises on record. In 2017 alone, 72,000 adults died from opioid overdoses. Let that number sink in, its higher than the death toll of the Vietnam war, more people than were killed by HIV/AIDS at the worst of the epidemic, greater than the population of Wilmington, Delaware.
Its also only the number for a single year.
As we deal with this crisis, the size of the numbers in front of us and the complexity of the issues often obscures the gravity of the situation. We also often focus so much on the main problem that we fail to notice the problems caused by the main issue. A gut-wrenching report seeks to fix that problem however and gives us the details on the number of children who have died in the crisis.
The toll of the opioid epidemic on children
In the first study of its kind, a group of Yale researchers investigated the number of deaths caused by opioid consumption in children and young adults under the age of 18. While other studies had included such deaths before, no known study had focused on this subject exclusively or had given it the attention it deserved.
While those previous studies had focused on the number of hospitalizations and worked backward from there, this study took a wider view that would include deaths outside a medical setting. It suggests that the actual number of children who die each year from this epidemic is closer to…
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