On International Overdose Awareness Day, Focus on Real Epidemics not the Phony Ones

August 31, 2022, marks the 21st anniversary of International Overdose Awareness Day. This year, the day could not be more relevant because in 2021 more than 107,000 Americans died from a drug overdose. Every day, more than 100 Americans succumb to a fatal overdose, many of them youth, and many of them are unaware that a one-time experimentation could be their last.

Much of the increase in overdoses is attributed to pills disguised to look like approved prescription medication, but unfortunately contain a lethal dose of fentanyl. Dismayingly, this growing threat to the public, and especially youth, is falling on deaf ears as a massive army of misinformed policymakers and organizations continue to steal airwaves and legislators’ time purporting to a so-called youth vaping epidemic. Yet, for many parents, the real issue is not strawberry-flavored vapes, but massive cartels flooding the market with hundreds of millions of fake pills that are found among youth as young as 12 years old.

In December 2018, then-surgeon general Jerome Adams declared a so-called youth vaping epidemic. The facts point to a different story. In 2021, only 11.3 percent of American high school students and 2.8 percent of middle schoolers were current e-cigarette users.

Meanwhile, a real and deadly epidemic was growing. Between 2019 and 2020, teen overdose deaths increased by 94 percent, from 492 to 954. Further, in 2021, there was an additional 20 percent increase in teen overdose deaths from the prior year.

Again, lawmakers do not seem concerned as they push forward the same prohibitionist policies that led to the fentanyl crisis. It is well known that restricting access to prescription pills regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration led to the then-heroin epidemic.

And while lawmakers purport that Big Tobacco is coming for their kids, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been increasingly warning the public about cartels using colorful pills to lure young users. In 2021, the DEA remarked that drug traffickers were “specifically targeting kids and teens by creating counterfeit pills in a variety of shapes and bright colors.” In the past few weeks, federal officials from across the country from California and Oregon to West Virginia have issued warnings to the public about seizures of “Rainbow Fentanyl,” which, is “a colorful version of the deadly drug that resembles candy.” 

Disturbingly, amid this epidemic, well-intended lawmakers are pushing policies that could lead to an epidemic of fake vapes laced with deadly fentanyl. In fact, these deadly products have already been seen across the country.

In September 2020, the DEA reported that the agency had seized vapes pens in 2019 which had tested positive for fentanyl. Earlier this year, a school district in Pennsylvania reported they had confiscated three vaping devices that tested positive for fentanyl. The Rocky Mountain Poison Center in Colorado issued a warning after the center had started “noticing that young people are getting fentanyl in liquid form and putting the cartridges in vaping pens and vaping fentanyl.”

The fentanyl crisis continues to grow, with the justice departments from California to Colorado to Pennsylvania reporting increases in fentanyl seizures. To stem the growing epidemic, many policymakers have embraced opioid harm reduction, including safe injection sites, access to sterilized needles, and even the use of medication-assisted treatment. 

Yet, the same policymakers are insistent on pushing tobacco harm reduction products to a black market. And this could have disastrous consequences. As evidenced in late 2019 when illicit vapor products, many containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), caused a spate of vaping-related lung injuries.

In light of the nearly 1 million Americans that have died from overdoses between 1999 and 2019, and on this 21st anniversary, policymakers ought to rectify the actions that led to the fentanyl crisis and address the true epidemic affecting American families. Strawberry-flavored vapor products that are regulated and have been on the market since at least 2016 are not causing massive deaths. Unless policymakers move past the policies that caused the American opioid crisis, the country could be headed for an overdose epidemic with fake vapes. 

Lindsey Stroud is Director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s Consumer Center.