Overdose kills more and more teenagers in 'epidemic' with 100,000 victims a year in the US
Teen deaths from fentanyl overdoses are up 20% in the past year. Who is to blame and what can be done to improve this situation? Teen overdose deaths have never been higher in the US. Young Americans are increasingly affected by fentanyl, an opioid drug. More than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses last year — the vast majority of them adults. But the group that showed the greatest growth in the death rate for this reason was precisely that of adolescents. Melanie Ramos' family is well aware of this. The 15-year-old girl died in her school's bathroom last month after taking a pill that contained fentanyl. Ramos and a friend thought they were taking oxycodone and acetaminophen. But the counterfeit pills were mixed with fentanyl — and she ended up intoxicated. "She was a beautiful, sweet girl with hardworking parents," her uncle Oscar recounted during a candlelit vigil on the steps of Bernstein High School, where friends and family prayed in Spanish and laid flo...