The opioid epidemic, once believe to focus almost entirely on middle-class, white men, has claimed thousands of lives of teenagers and even children, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
As CNN reports, JAMA researchers looked over hundreds of thousands of death certificates of infants, children, adolescents and teenagers, dating back to 1999, and found that almost 9,000 of them could be attributed to opioid overdoses in one way or another. Researchers admitted, however, that there is some margin of error in their methodology due to some deaths likely having been mis-classified.
Nevertheless, the numbers are downright terrifying, write the researchers.
“Millions of children and adolescents are now routinely exposed in their homes, schools and communities to these potent and addictive drugs.”
Looking At The Numbers
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