Justin Carlyle, age 23, photographed on the street in Kensington, a neighborhood of Philadelphia, has lived with addiction to fentanyl and other drugs for a decade. After a decade when overdoses devastated young Americans, drug deaths among people in the U.S. under age 35 are plummeting. The shift is saving thousands of young lives every year. Photo Credit: Rachel Wisniewski/for NPR
Society USADrastic Drop in Drug-Related Deaths
Across the United States, a stunning drop in drug deaths has occurred among citizens under the age of 35, with 27% fewer fatal overdoses across all age groups in 2024, as teens appear to play safer when it comes to experimenting with illicit substances.
“What we’re seeing is a massive reduction in [fatal] overdose risk, among Gen Z in particular,” states Nabarun Dasgupta, an addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina. “Ages 20 to 29 lowered the risk by 47%, cut it right in half.”
In 2021, fentanyl and other drugs like OxyContin and Percocet killed more than 31,000 people under the age of 35, and by this year, that number had dropped to 16,690 fatal overdoses. This decline could be attributed not only to the wider distribution of Narcan (or naloxone), a weaker, less deadly fentanyl, a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids, but also to more readily available healthcare dedicated to addiction. According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, the number of teens abstaining from substance grew to its highest level in 2024. Consequently, roughly 15,000 fewer drug deaths among young people were recorded in 2024. Moreover, it appears that people in their teens and twenties are choosing to experiment with less risky drugs. “Alcohol and opioids are on the outs with Gen Z, and instead we see [a shift to] cannabis and psychedelics, and those are inherently safer drugs.”
