Roughly 22 high school students die each week from a fentanyl overdose.In a nationally representative survey study, less than half of 8th graders surveyed attributed great risk to experimental use of fentanyl.The study's findings are a "call to action" to better educate children and teens about the synthetic opioid's risks, a researcher said.
A considerable proportion of younger adolescents may be unaware of the dangers of fentanyl use, according to a cross-sectional survey study.
Among the adolescents surveyed, 47.8% of 8th graders attributed great risk to experimental use of fentanyl, while 57.2% and 66.5% attributed great risk to occasional or regular use, respectively, reported Richard Miech, PhD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues in JAMA Network Open.
For students in 10th grade, 63.6%, 71.5%, and 77.3% attributed great risk to experimental, occasional, or regular use, while these proportions for students in 12th grade were 69.8%, 78.5%, and 84.8%, respectively.
"To the extent that increasing adolescents' awareness of the dangers of fentanyl is an important tool to prevent overdoses, these results indicate there is room for improvement on this front," Miech and team wrote. "Warnings to students that fentanyl may be added into counterfeit pills purported to help with studying or anxiety will likely have little protective effect among those who do not believe that using fentanyl can have serious health consequences on first use."
