Fentanyl kills more young Americans than COVID. The underlying causes should worry us all.


Henna Hundal
Sun, February 6, 2022

This column is part of an ongoing series by USA TODAY Opinion exploring the mental health crisis facing Americans.

Even as we still grapple with COVID-19, an epidemic lurking beneath the surface may be disrupting the lives of young Americans even more.

Based on a recent analysis of Centers for Disease Control data, fentanyl has become the predominant killer for Americans ages 18 to 45. In the past two years, deaths from fentanyl have significantly exceeded deaths from COVID-19 for this age group. The overdoses cut across gender, race, socioeconomic status and geography.

Unfortunately, this trend doesn’t appear that it will be reversed anytime soon. In fact, these deaths are part of a growing crisis of addiction ripping apart the fabric of communities across this country.

And it's a trend we must address. Congress should swiftly deploy resources to support young people contending with drug addiction. Boosting funding for treatment centers and ensuring equitable geographic access to these centers should be a top priority this year.

Besides fentanyl, what's to blame for rising addiction, overdoses?

But while we work to stop the bleeding, we also have to probe its source. Why are thousands of young American lives entangled in such tragedy? What – more upstream than the fentanyl itself – is fueling the uptick in addictions and overdoses?

In an era where, from social activism to scientific research, it’s plain to see how “sharp and astute and tolerant and thoughtful and entrepreneurial our young people are,” as former President Barack Obama once put it, why are overdoses taking a front-row seat?

To find the answer, we know better than to apply the “blame game” paradigms of the 1980s and '90s crack epidemic. In fact, we now know that this strategy of attributing addiction to personal moral failures flies in the face of biology and decades of empirical sociological findings.

Instead, it makes sense to expand our aperture, to examine the policies and processes that should be nurturing young people’s social and economic prospects as well as overall well-being, especially in pandemic times.

And here, unfortunately, we find a consistent pattern of top-down failures.

According to a recent Harvard Institute of Politics survey of more than 2,000 18- to- 29-year-olds, 55% report feeling fearful about the direction of the country and 35% see the U.S. as headed for another civil war soon. A majority of respondents describe “feeling down, depressed or hopeless” and finding “little interest or pleasure in doing things” for at least multiple days.

Perhaps most tellingly, economic issues loom large in young people’s fear about the future, with the surveyed youth naming inflation, the cost of living and economic inequality among their top concerns. This fear bears out in the way the pandemic has even further stratified young Americans’ economic prospects from those of their parents, as mountains of student loan debt make dreams like homeownership a distant reality.

The economy isn’t alone in weighing increasingly heavily on youth’s mental health. A whopping 56% of the survey respondents also cite climate change as having a net impact on their plans for the future — and nearly the same percentage of respondents say the U.S. isn’t doing enough about it.
Eco-anxiety haunts young people

Indeed, climate anxiety is shaping up to be such an onerous concern for young Americans that there’s a term to describe it: eco-anxiety. Therapists across the country are grappling with how to help young clients navigate eco-anxiety amid indications that it’s profoundly shaping a generation’s relationships with each other and the world around them.

The chasm is widening between where young people see their lives headed and what they feel those who could right the course – including their government – are doing to help.

Add to all of this a global pandemic during a time when many people are already saddled with medical debt, and it’s not hard to imagine why America’s youth are hurting.

Young people need support at all levels – in treatment centers for addiction, and in broader policy decisions that are shaping a future for them radically out of step with their dreams.

We need to move swiftly to help young people who are struggling. And rather than dehumanize or reprimand them for their pain, we should listen.

Henna Hundal is a public policy specialist and a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Follow her on Twitter: @hennahundal.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fentanyl deaths: Young Americans' fear and depression drive overdoses