Accidental drug overdoses may have cost America's young generations lost over a million years worth of life during a five year period from 2015 to 2019, a new study finds.
Researchers from Ohio State University, in Columbus, gathered data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to find the number of years of life lost from children and teens aged ten to 19 who died of an accidental drug overdose.
By comparing age of death to the average life expectancy, they found the age group suffered 200,000 lost years of life. When the study age was extended to 24 years old, they found a total of 1.2 million years of life lost.
Drug overdoses have become a massive problem for health officials in the U.S., and this study does not account for a period of time during the Covid pandemic where record overdose deaths were recorded. It appears that crisis is affecting the nations youth as well.
Researchers found that 1.2 million years of life were lost from accidental drug overdoses among Americans ten to 19 years old from 2015 to 2019. Around 200,000 of those lives were lost among people ten to 19 alone
'Our findings represent an unacceptable preventable mortality burden for adolescents and young people in the U.S.' researchers wrote in the study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
In total, 3,296 people between ages ten and 19 died from an accidental overdose from 2015 to 2019, with the figure jumping to 21,689 for ages ten to 24.
Using 2017 Social Security Administration data, researchers estimated how long
